Yami no Tomodachi
by Scarabbug
Summary: Death T has taken more than enough from them, but they still believe they can change their future. They’ll fix the puzzle together and then the Spirit will need a new host. Albeit only temporarily. AU from manga 5 onwards.
1. Chapter 1

**As inspired by a fic on the LJ community _Tsumi no Batsu_, but for the life of me I can't remember who it was or when and JL-Seek is good for nothing. **

**Am taking suggestions of better names for this thing. **

**Standard disclaimers apply.**

* * *

Yami no Tomodachi.

They sat there together for the longest time, with the pieces scattered on the table between them and absolutely no idea where to start.

Jounouchi had started by counting the pieces. There were twenty-two exactly. He'd counted them five times just to be sure, and then Anzu counted them again. And again, until her hands finally decided to stop shaking so much every time she touched them. Jounouchi almost said something about it, but in the end he decided that maybe he'd better not. Anzu could be sensitive about things like that. As it happened, they all barely said a word to each other half the night.

Twenty two pieces. There were twenty two pieces to the endlessly _irritating_ conundrum that was the Millennium Puzzle. Jounouchi had never been good at that kind of thing, Honda had broken his gameboy as a kid because he couldn't work out the buttons and Anzu… he didn't know about her, but he got the feeling that even knowing Yuugi as long as she must have, she'd never even solved a rubix cube or anything like that. Plus, the Millennium Puzzle didn't work the way most games seemed to, anyway. All the other stuff he'd ever messed with down in the game shop storeroom –all those old fashioned toys and wooden spindles and things that fell apart easily but were way too hard to put back together… the Millennium puzzle wasn't anything like those, even though it looked as if it was.

Usually, Yuugi had told him once, games like this would seem easy, at first. A few pieces would slip into place without you even having to think about it and only then would it start to get difficult, and you'd realise you had to go back and take it apart and start all over again. Like the game was lulling you into a false state of security before jumping up and laughing at you: _"See? I guess I'm a whole lot harder to understand than you thought I was, now, aren't I?"_

But the Millennium Puzzle even refused to _start out_ easily. It was as difficult to fit the first two pieces together as it was for all of them. The pieces slip and tremble in his fingers, and it really did feel as if the puzzle must've been laughing.

Ten o clock in the evening. The news had came on television but nobody wanted to watch it and Jounouchi had turned the thing off before anything could come out –as it undoubtedly would since they pretty much owned half the network– about Kaiba Corp. He'd rather be where he was right now than back home, anyway, but he wasn't all that sure what to say about the others. Anzu sat curled up on the couch with a cushion on her lap and two of the puzzle pieces lying on top of it. Honda sat in the window frame looking down into an empty street. If he suggested that they all went home and tried again tomorrow, he had a feeling the answer he got would be no. Nobody was leaving because nobody really wanted to.

Maybe it was for the same reason that Jounouchi didn't. Because being in the Game Shop, even just the living room, made them all feel a little closer to him. As if they could all just look up and see him walking through the door, smiling over some new card and tripping on that upturned corner of the carpet.

It wasn't going to happen. Still, Jounouchi could always imagine. Just like he could imagine all these little golden pieces of puzzle slipping back into the right position just because he told them to.

If determination alone could fix the Millennium Puzzle, it would've come together six times over just this evening. But maybe sheer will just wasn't as powerful as any of them had wanted to think it was.

'Eight whole years.' Anzu murmured, softly. Those three words hung over their heads like something out of a really bad dream. Eight years of patience, a sense of logic none of them even close to had, _and_ the ability to read handwritten noted that looked a lot more like thoughtless doodles than actual kanji. Jounouchi didn't want to think about it taking any longer.

They all knew none of them had half a breath of a chance. Not alone. Not in eight years, or even in twenty.

But then, they weren't solving the Millennium Puzzle alone. Not like Yugi had had to. They had all three of them to work it out.

'Well… Why don't you try starting with the middle instead of the edges, or something?' Honda suggested quietly, to which Jounouchi could only nod and be kind enough not to mention the fact that they'd already tried that several hours ago and it hadn't worked any better than anything else they were trying. He picked up the pieces and started over.

* * *

_**This was an accident. Not the kind where sirens sound.

* * *

**_

Hanasaki came round a little later the next day, but none of them had much to say to him.

They didn't really _have_ to say anything at all, though, because Hanasaki already got the picture. He said something about Grandfather Muto screaming in the hospital and having to be put back on the respirator for a while. He said that he'd been talking about Yuugi.

Hanasaki was probably the only guy Jounouchi knew who was less of a man than Yuugi. This time, though, he wasn't going to comment when the kid burst out crying. Not because he was sad: because he was confused. Because Yuugi didn't lose games like this. Because Yuugi knew how to save peoples lives without looking anything like the weedy little kid he was and this shouldn't have happened the way it did. Because none of them could tell him just where Yuugi was or whether or not the police were even still involved in this. None of them had been called in for questioning. None of them had reported anybody missing because none of them had any clue what they would've said.

And none of them knew how to tell Yuugi's grandfather he was alive when his grandson wasn't, because all of them had let him die. When they got right down to it, Jounouchi couldn't stop himself thinking that that was what they'd done to him. They hadn't believed enough and Kaiba had ripped their friend to shreds because of it.

Jounouchi thought he might cry himself a little, later. It'd been forty eight hours already and he was starting to wonder why none of them but Anzu had so much as started sniffling.

_Because that would be stupid_, the little voice inside his head was whispering. _After all, you don't even know if Yugi's dead anyway, do you? You don't know what Kaiba did with him and it isn't like you've seen a body—_

Jounouchi told the little voice to shut the hell up before he silenced it with something. Most likely alcohol and to hell if he was a sworn T-Total.

Terrified by the thought of ending up being smothered by the stuff that was currently killing his father, the little voice in Jounouchi's head did exactly what he told it to.

'Jounouchi-san?'

Hanasaki sat at the Game Store's kitchen table in a _Zombira_ t-shirt that was way too big for him and with his feet not touching the ground. A recently emptied coffee mug was still clutched tightly in his fingers and Anzu was already re-boiling the water. 'I… should I… should I stay, I mean? I…'

'Hanasaki…'

The boy fell silent and nervous the second Jounouchi opened his mouth. But… that was Hanasaki, wasn't it? A nervous little mite who could easily make Yuugi look like a movie star.

Jounouchi's seen the kid break often enough, but it's always amazed him what happens when the little guy puts on a mask. He started thinking, at first, that that was what Yuugi did, too, and maybe there was something weird about hiding one of them behind Another. He's not sure what exactly happened to convince him otherwise. All he knows now is that it doesn't matter which Yugi it was he stood besides during Death T, because neither of them were a scared little kid anymore. Both of them were made of the very same stuff.

Kind of a bummer, then when both of them were beaten. Why?

Jounouchi decided that that would be the first thing he asked the Millennium Puzzle.

'It's _Kun_, you know that right?' Jounouchi finished, seriously. 'Jounouchi-_kun_.'

'Jounouchi-kun,' Hanasaki whispered the name over like it was some kind of weird mantra.

'Hanasaki-kun. You… don't have to stay, you know.' Jounouchi went on, ignoring his hesitance. 'We… thanks, that's all. For what you've done. We needed that.'

'…Are you going home, too?'

'No,' Jounouchi looked up at Honda and Anzu. He had their approval to say as much, even though he hadn't asked for it. 'No we're going to stay here. Just for a while to sort things out here.'

'Jounouchi…Kun?' Hanasaki frowned at him, and Jounouchi wasn't sure if he was genuinely curious or just testing out the sound of the new word.

'Somebody's got to watch this place, right? Maybe for a long while yet. We've got some stuff to put back together and we won't stop until we've done it.'

'That's right,' Anzu nodded, though by this point neither of them were really speaking to Hanasaki. 'We won't stop trying. Not until we're sure this is over. '

Hanasaki didn't look as if he understood, but still, he nodded into his empty cup and didn't say anything more on the subject.

When he left a few hours later he was still way too polite about it, with the bowing and the nodding and the careful requests to be excused. But at least he said 'Goodbye Jounouchi-kun. See you back at school next week.' For all that Jounouchi really cared about it.

When they went back into the living room, Honda was once again sitting with the puzzle pieces, staring at them closely through too tired eyes. Anzu was the first to sit down next to him and start the whole process over of picking up one piece, checking it against the others and seeing whether or not it fit together. Stopping, putting it down and picking up another, repeating the process…

Jounouchi saw the long night coming and ordered in a Pizza.

* * *

_**Never even noticed we're suddenly crumbling.**__**

* * *

**_

It was probably the creepiest, most terrifying dream that she had ever had in her life. At least that was what he figured when she sat up suddenly screaming her head of without actually waking. She calmed down a little though after he'd brought her a glass of water and let her use his side as a pillow for a while.

'Feel better?'

'No,' she answered, shakily. It was pretty much the answer he'd expected.

'Yeah, guess not. I know none of us are okay really.' Jounouchi didn't deal with girl stuff well, but unlike a lot of guys he knew, he at least knew enough to stay afloat when one of them was clinging to him and panicking. '…You were screaming.'

Anzu rubbed her eyes with her fingers. 'Y-yeah. Guess I would've been dead then if it'd been real.'

'…That horror house thing, right? That was what you dreamt about. The one with,' he bit back a shudder. 'The hands and stuff.'

'And all those awful noises,' Anzu crept in close beneath his shoulder. 'I didn't… .scream the first time. I don't know how I managed not to but I didn't and… I was there. and you were, and I thought that I could do it again.' She clung to him a little in a way that would be awkward in the morning but which, for now, she could get away with. 'Yuugi needed me to do it again. You all did. I'm sorry. I think… I let you all down. I screamed. I couldn't help it.'

'Hey, relax. It was just a dream, right? We're still here…' _But Yuugi isn't_ a little voice inside his head told him. Jounouchi quite casually told it to shut up.

'Yeah,' Anzu said it like she didn't believe it and took another sip of water. The silence felt like another Death-T aftermath. The bit when the audience had finally stopped cheering and realised that something was wrong. If Jounouchi could remember rightly, that had taken quite a while, and then they'd all been herded out again, whispering and muttering and not quite certain what they'd witnessed. Except for Him and Honda, that was. Him and Honda who had yelled a lot, and threatened violence and Anzu who had screamed and fought like hell to get back to the arena.

'_You won't get away with this. You won't get away with this, you _won't_!' _

'They got away with it, didn't they?' she asked. 'They just… I thought if we tried hard enough. If we believed in him enough.'

'Kaiba's a cheating scumbag though, right. We all know that,' Jounouchi would've shrugged but his shoulders were a little busy making room for her beneath them. 'We couldn't stop that. No matter how strong what we have is… it couldn't stop a cheater.'

'…I thought it could' she whispered, evenly.

'Maybe. It just got unlucky this time. something went wrong and we couldn't stop it…'

Anzu smiled a little sadly. 'Unlucky. Right. Because in games, sometimes, it comes down to how lucky you are…' Her skin felt damn and clammy as she pretty much nestled against him, the way Shizuka used to when they were hiding from their parents fighting, but he didn't move away. He also decided not to mention that she smelled a little bit like the anchovies that had been on her side of the pizza. Besides, he didn't mind that much.

Anzu kept on talking to him. She talked about other pizzas from times before they really knew each other. About trips to fairgrounds and water parks when she'd been trying so hard to see the Other Yuugi. She told him of times where she knew fine well that Yuugi was blushing at her bathing suit while she pretended to be totally oblivious. She told him about how it felt to have a gun pointed at her head and not knowing which Yuugi it was trying to save her. She told him about games she bust at the age of ten because she'd been too impatient to finish them and how Yuugi would always buy her new ones to replace them. She told him about losing Yuugi once, at another kid's party and eventually finding him locked in the under-stairs closet, his spiky hair all messed with dirt and spider cobwebs, the box which held the millennium puzzle clutched tightly to his chest.

Maybe she fell asleep again after that. Or maybe they just sat in perfectly still silence for the next few hours until the sun rose and Honda came round to open the game shop. Jounouchi wasn't all that certain.

* * *

_**Tell me nothing ever counts. Lashing out or breaking down.**_

_**Still somebody loses, 'cause there's no way to turn around.

* * *

**_

When that friend of Yugi's (Hiroto, wasn't it? Decent kid, in a rough-end-of-the-alleys way) came to collect him two days, later Sugoroku Muto found that he couldn't start to explain, exactly, why it was that he was still alive. Old man that he was and on his third chance, if his pacemaker was anything to go by. And then there was his grandson…

Yuugi.

Parents should not have to bury their children. That was true enough. But what of their grandchildren? The very thought should've made his heart stop again, but for some odd reason, it didn't. Not even when he thought about that insane boy who tried so hard to drive him just as crazy in a box full of monsters.

He didn't understand that.

Something told him, though, that Jounouchi did. Maybe even Honda, here, too.

'We just… we're putting the puzzle back together now. I mean, trying to. We couldn't leave it that way. All in pieces. Doesn't look right…'

'Hm. Puzzles can be like that once they've been completed. Yuugi never did want to take that thing apart. Said it wouldn't be good for either of them.'

One little annoying thing about Yuugi's friend though: despite the fact that every time he'd seen them up until now they were the kind of rough and tumble bunch that would sooner scream at the goose and send it flying that just be happy with whispering "boo" at it, they were sure as hell being awfully careful around him. Old man that he was, he still didn't want to be reminded of it. Not when he had a grandson

They wouldn't tell him much about that, but then again they didn't have to. Sugoroku had already felt the cards in Yuugi's hands dying, and if that hadn't killed him then he wasn't going to let the memory do it.

'Um, Mister Muto, shouldn't you be using the…'

'To hell with hospital wheelchairs and contraptions, boy. My legs are working perfectly fine.'

'But…'

'Heh. Don't you patronize me, Hiroto. These legs were working a long time before _yours_ were and I'd bet money they'll keep on going after yours have stopped, as well. It's this pace-making thing of mine I have to worry about. Now let's just get home to that game shop already and see what we can do about that grandson of mine's puzzle.'

Something told Jounouchi, Sugoroku had already realised, that Yugi _wasn't_ dead. And he was going to run with that hope for as long as a dodgy ticker would allow him.

The first time round, he hadn't wanted Yuugi to solve the Millennium Puzzle. All because of old superstitions that Yuugi thought he'd made up to frighten him. But the stories had never been imaginary, and neither, is seemed, had the haunting curse that surrounded the Puzzle.

That was where the answers Sugoroku wanted waited. Inside the smashed remains of the Millennium Puzzle Jounouchi had fished out of the mud on the river bank.

When you took away an old man's last reason to think the games and puzzles had all been worth it, it was all that man could really do to carry on, really, wasn't it? It was all he could do to look for the thing he'd lost in the darkness.

* * *

_**Do you still have doubts that us having faith makes any sense?

* * *

**_

_"Our breaking reports say that the recently opened Kaiba Corp theme park established in downtown Domino less than one month earlier is closing it's doors to the public. Critics state that the closure is due to a lack of funding, or otherwise difficulties with the establishment itself…" _

'Jounouchi, turn that goddamn thing off, will ya?'

'Sorry.'

_"…Parents too, have voiced recent concerns over the circumstances under which the park was opened to the public and fail to see the logic which originated in the park's organiza—" _

* * *

**TBC.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter two up. Standard disclaimers apply. I'm trying to get into some actual plot now, trust me, I really am. It'll happen. Sorry if it isn't moving fast enough.

* * *

**

**Two.**

Jounouchi hardly ever went home these days.

Home was kind of a funny word for it, anyways. Home, to Jounouchi, had always been a place he avoided. Grandfather Sugoroku didn't seem to mind about his rather regular sleeping over. Not even when Jounouchi ended up spending half –or all– the night in Yuugi's room. Never actually sleeping, just needing to be _in_ there.

He missed Yuugi so damn much it hurt him just to breathe.

He used to hang around the Kame Store a lot in the first place, because anything was better than the flat and the guy he was supposed to call his father, so it wasn't all that different. He went home for a few things and on mornings before school, but for the most part, Jounouchi spent all of his time sitting in the game store living room and staring into the broken pieces of golden puzzle. When he did sleep, it was usually on the couch.

Or when he _tried_ to sleep, anyway. Actually it had gotten to the point where he didn't want to close his eyes again.

He didn't, because he knew that when he did, he'd see Death-T again. Falling blades, sick madmen, cards and dragons and a desperate fight not to scream. ('_So close. We'd been so damn close and than that Duel Box had to happen...') _And then he'd get to asking himself all those disturbing questions he didn't want to know about until he had somebody there who could actually answer them.

Like what the hell happened inside of that Duel Box? Like why hadn't the King of Games drawn the cards he wanted? Like why had Kaiba been as twisted and sick as to set the whole thing up in the first place, almost kill them five times over and then take Yuugi away from them?

…And what the hell did that psychopath do with him, anyway?

Because Joey wasn't going to think about any of those questions until they'd completed the Millennium Puzzle. And anyway, Jounouchi knew from his nightmares, now, that it wasn't _laughter_ he always heard coming from inside it's broken pieces.

It was actually probably more like crying. Or the way people would've cried when they didn't have any tearducts.

_Definitely_ crying, he told himself one morning, while cursing himself for falling asleep on the Mutos' couch when he'd promised himself he wouldn't. And as horrible and terrifying as that knowledge was, Jounouchi still tried to hang onto it. The crying had to come from _something_, right? The noises and whispers he heard in his dreams –his nightmares– had to be made by somebody who wasn't Anzu or Honda or Grandfather Sugoroku of Jounouchi himself.

Yuugi, maybe? No. That was just a little _too_ scary. More likely they were the sounds of the _Other_ him, a spirit still alive inside of the broken golden pieces. Dead twice over and yet still there, waiting. Waiting for somebody to solve the Puzzle just the way that Yuugi had.

Because if that was true, then that meant the _Other Yuugi_ wasn't dead. And if _he_ wasn't…

Jounouchi didn't want to think about it. Only he couldn't _help_ it, because _The Other Yuugi wasn't dead_ and both the Yuugi's exist _together_ or else not at all. All they had to do was put the Puzzle back together. That was all.

And then, Jounouchi told himself determinedly as he forced two more pieces back together, despite their reluctance to do so. Then he could start asking all the questions he was currently too scared sick of to mention.

* * *

**_Here we are again with another bunch of soft songs._**

**_

* * *

_**

'Oh, for god's sakes, Honda, stop _juggling_ with those things.'

It was kind of funny, really. Five thousand year old pieces of what could possibly be a really scary piece of dark magic, and Honda was juggling them up and down like some kind of demented character on a Duel Monster's Card. Jounouchi was sure there was a clown one out there just like that, but it wasn't really the kind of card you'd find in his deck, or Yuugi's.

'…Man, there's nothing better I can do with 'em.' He caught the two golden pieces in his hands and placed them back on the coffee table. 'Damn things just won't go together and I've tried everything I can think of.' Plus a few things they probably hadn't thought of at all, Jounouchi added in his head.

Of course the pieces wouldn't go together. It was getting pretty damn predictable, really, because it'd been three weeks or more now since Jounouchi brought the puzzle home and it was still as broken as it ever was, and Jounouchi honestly didn't know why Yuugi hadn't quit by now in the first place.

But he _hadn't_ quit, the little voice in his head which he liked to call Sugoroku told him. And it was important that Jounouchi didn't either.

'I heard,' grandfather Sugoroku said, 'that that crazy Death T place of his… they're pulling it down in a couple of weeks.'

'Figures,' Honda snorted between his teeth. 'They used it for what they wanted to, after all. Kaiba got what he wanted.'

'We should go get Yuugi's deck back,' Jounouchi said. And why not? After all it was probably still lying there. Probably missing it's most valuable cards but surely there'd be something left behind. Something they could remember Yuugi by other than this broken puzzle. And Jounouchi really didn't want to think like that, because that meant resigning himself to the fact that Yuugi wasn't coming back, but he just couldn't help it. He just…

'We can't, Jounouchi,' Anzu said, her eyes screwed up in a soft, pained expression that Jounouchi thought he was probably becoming far too familiar with. 'We can't go near that place and you know it. We'd probably never come out again.'

Nobody had an answer for that one. Not even Sugoroku, though it looked as if he really _wanted_ to have one. Or more like everyone did and nobody actually wanted to say it.

'When Yuugi was making this thing the first time, he used to throw the pieces around.'

'What? For real?' Jounouchi blinked and turned to gaze at the grandfather. Somehow he just couldn't picture Yuugi having that kind of a temper tantrum without sniggering, but as it turned out, that wasn't what Sugoroku meant.

'Hm. And he used to hide them in odd places, so he could try and forget where they were and later go back to track them down again. He spent a lot of time just playing with the pieces, really. Said he liked the way they looked. I think it must've stopped him getting so worked up about it when he couldn't find the answers right away.'

Sugoroku Muto tossed a golden piece of puzzle up in his fingers and caught it easily without actually looking at the hand he was catching with. 'I told him that was alright, really. Told him to take it one piece at a time. If he had to play with them that way, then he should. Puzzles are games, after all, aren't they? Who says they're only good in one piece?'

'This isn't a good game, Grandpa,' Anzu commented, softly.

He sometimes talked to Anzu the same way he used to talk to Yuugi, Jounouchi thought. Like an actual _grandfather_. He figure that that was because he'd known her almost as long as Yuugi and she'd been a part of all of them since long before Jounouchi or Honda or Ryou Bakura. 'No. No, it's not. But at this moment it's the only game that any of us have got, now, isn't it?'

Anzu went back to picking at a couple of the pieces, trying to fit a bunch of them together and knowing that she never would. Jounouchi had no idea in hell when he had become perceptive enough to notice stupid things like that, but he had and he was glad for. It was probably another thing he had to thank Yuugi for.

When Grandfather Sugoroku left the room to tend the Store (finally open again, after too long a holiday) Honda started juggling the Puzzle pieces again.

* * *

_**We're under stress again, but it has always been that way.**_

* * *

When Mokuba Kaiba called the Kame Game Shop, it wasn't half as big a surprise as it probably should have been. 

It took ten rings before anybody (Jounouchi) plucked up the spirit to answer it in the first place. The conversation after that was suppsoed to be brief and to the point. Typically Kaiba.

Only Mokuba didn't sound that much like the Kaiba they remembered.

'_It's… I don't know much about it all now, Jounouchi. Death-T's been closed and all the places in there have been blocked off to the public.' _

'That so?'

'_Yeah… It's all being kept hush, really. The newspapers are having a field day. For not just hanging up.' _

Okay. So maybe it wasn't totally as to-the-point-Kaiba as Jounouchi had expected. 'Whatever. Served its purpose now, though, hasn't it?'

'_Jounouchi…'_

'So are you gonna tell us what you did with him, or is that psychopath brother of yours keeping you out of the loop as much as he is us?' he kept on talking right through the Kaiba. 'Haven't figured it out yet, have you? He'll probably target _you_ next or something cause you're the only other guy who might beat him. Doubt he's happy with just crushing Yuugi.'

He knew he probably shouldn't get so ratty with the kid. He'd seen the look on Mokuba's face after Death T finished too. He saw the fear and pain and desperation directed right in the direction of his own older brother. He'd seen Yuugi pull the kid out of a Capsule Prison, trembling and quaking.

Mokuba Kaiba could be their only hope, now, of ever finding Yuugi.

But Jounouchi chewed him up about it, anyway.

The younger Kaiba stayed silent for a very long pause before eventually saying. _'Could you maybe… Put Honda on the line?_'

Heh. Figured that the kid would ask for the only guy who owed him enough not to hang up on him right that instant. 'Why should I?'

There was a deep, exhaled breath far too tense to possibly come from a ten year old_. 'Just tell him I need to talk to him, okay? Like try right now… Please.'_ He added on the end, a little grudgingly.

_Please_… It didn't sound like the kid had used _that_ word in a helluva long time. Jounouchi was surprised enough not to come up with an instant, witty retort. Instead, he just handed the phone to Honda.

A Kaiba had just asked Jounouchi oh so politely (with a "please" and a "thank you" and everything) is he might speak with a friend of his… Yeah. Jounouchi figured this really had to be the day the whole world ended. But Honda hung up the phone a few minutes later and the world was still standing around them, to Jounouchi figured it wasn't the craziest thing that could happen, after all.

'Well?' Anzu asked, in her least polite tone of voice.

'He's asking how _you_ are,' Honda said, looking pointedly in Grandfather Sugoroku direction. The grandparent, for his part, just stared right back and blinked a few times.

'That so?'

'Yeah, that's so. Apparently.'

Jounouchi sniffed a little, staring at the puzzle pieces sitting in his hands. He hadn't quite got the hang of juggling them the way that Honda did, but he _had_ worked out how to balance them on top of each other in a weird broken tower, which was kind of fun, really. The tallest he'd ever gotten it so far was fifteen pieces high. 'What am I, man, an echo?'

'He's also saying,' Honda went on, coughing to disguise his annoyance at Jounouchi's comment. 'That Miss Mazaki left her _badge and jacket_ in the changing rooms at Death T… since she did actually pay for it...' he went on. '...Mokuba figures she might want to get it, take it back and get her _money_ refunded.'

Jounouchi tried his hardest not to choke on his own disgusted disbelief. 'He's askin' about refunding Death-T uniforms…For real?'

'Yeah,' Honda shrugged, with perhaps a little less scorn than Jounouchi thought he should be showing. 'For real. Anzu-chan?'

It was kind of weird for Honda to use honorifics but on this occasion nobody honestly gave a damn about the discrepancy. Everyone turned their stares towards Anzu, sitting on the couch looking just a little bit stunned by the exchange.

'He can boil that thing in his own personal tar pit for all I care,' she said, firmly, before virtually storming out of the room and thudding upstairs, either to the bathroom or just to sit alone in Yuugi's room for a while, the way she'd taken to doing when she didn't want them to see her crying. Grandfather Sugoroku shook his head. 'Guess you can't blame the brat for trying not top be entirely like his brother, eh?'

That was pretty much all they said about the phone call for the rest of the evening.

**_

* * *

_**

And once we get it right, then I know it's there to stay.

* * *

Bakura came round one rainy evening three days after they went back to school. Jounouchi found him stood upon the doorstop, shuffling uneasily and toying with the straps of his school bag.

'Whoa. 'Kura…'

'Hello, Jounouchi-kun.' There was an uneasy silence for a few seconds afterwards. Circumstances, Jounouchi figured. Because neither of them had ever figured they'd be stood on a doorstep in a just-beginning rainstorm. Bakura looked kind of like he'd run half the way there and was trying his best not to look it. Jounouchi had no idea in hell when he had become perceptive enough to notice stupid things like that, but he had and he was glad for. It was probably another thing he had to thank Grandfather Sugoroku for.

They'd forgotten about him, Jounouchi realised. And then he realised just how insane and _stupid_ that was. Who could forget about Bakura? Bakura who had shown up last friday asd a transfer and had sat still and quiet in the classroom, trying not to be noticed. (Which was hard, because the girls all seemed to think that he was cute and started to flock him.) Bakura who had noticed the somewhat dejected look that seemed half burried into all of their expressions, brought it up, then apologised very rapidly when he saw how mentioning it had made them react.

Bakura who had pretty much been elected their friend by Anzu the moment he patted her on the shoulder and offered his condolences, even though when anybody else tried to do it, Anzu either snapped at them or ignored them completely.

Yeah. there was something weird about timid old Bakura Ryou alright. But he was still their friend now, even with the craziness and the weird obsession he seemed to have with the model games and monsters, none of which are things Jounouchi really wanted to bother with right now. Bakura who was Yuugi's friend. Suddenly Jounouchi Katsuya felt like even more of a self pitying idiot than he already had been over the last however many days because he hadn't even spoken to him or wondered what the hell had to be going through Ryou's head.

'I figured you might need a little help. And I do know quite a bit about Games, so I…' he swallowed nervously, shuffling on the doorstep. 'May I come in, Jounouchi?'

Jounouchi didn't say anything; he just smiled a little and stepped aside to let Bakura in.

* * *

**_Maybe you are wondering why it took us so long…_**

**_

* * *

_**

'Hey, man, check it out!'

Jounouchi looked up and... yeah. That was Honda, grinning and holding a hand out towards his face. This in and of itself would have been a little weird and not much else, if it hadn't been for the two golden pieces sitting together in the palm of his hand. He'd actually managed to make them fit

Just two pieces.

It shouldn't have made Jounouchi grin quite as much as it actually did, because _damn it_. Three weeks and not one damn thing to show for it, except for this. It was both totally infuritating and exhilirating at the same time and Jounouchi wasn't sure which of those feelings he should be running with.

'But it's just one piece, Honda,' Anzu muttered quietly, apparently not exactly keen to join their enthusiasm.

'hey, you're the one who's been messing with _this_ exact piece for the last few days, Anzu,' Honda grinned, holding the two joined pieces out towards her face now instead of Jounouchi's. 'What's up, you jealous because I got mine together first?'

'Oh, grow _up_, Honda.'

Honda was probably a little disappointed by people's total lack of enthusiasm, because he scowled at her. 'Man, aren't _you_ a regular ray of sunshine today?'

'Like I'm supposed to be?' Anzu snapped. And loudly, too.

That response was more surprising than her first one and earned her a couple of uneasy glances. Iit was strange. Jounouchi had figured she'd be the most excited out of all of them, and yet here she was, as slumped and down as she had been all morning.

The way she said it sounded weird, too. Not like her usual "_for goodness sakes you're such a klutz_" voice or "_wish I'd thought to ask some girls to come_". More like "_I'm tired of this and tired of that and I _wish_ I could be as pleased as you are just to keep you happen but I just don't think it's worth it now_." Now that he thought about it, it was actually a little scary, to see that kind of attitude coming from Anzu. Anzu if-I-just-sit-down-and-say-nothing-they'll-walk-all-over-me, don't-ask-the-girl's-to-play-just-so-you-can-look-up-their-skirts-you-jerks Mazaki. She looked tired, he thought, but then again they probably all did. 'Look, I'm _trying_, guys I really am, it's just… four weeks and we have what? One piece. How exactly is this something to celebrate?'

'Anzu, c'mon. seriously. This is a good thing.'

'I think he's right, Anzu,' Bakura said quietly. 'It's not too bad as far as this particular puzzle goes, right? Besides, it's Honda who put it together and he's not exactly the best at puzzles amongst us. If _he_ can do it...'

'Uh. yeah. Thanks, Bakura.'

'And actually, its two pieces,' Grandfather commented. 'And two pieces more than you had this morning. If I remember rightly it took Yuugi roughly the same amount of time.'

'So, two down, right?' Jounouchi let himself smile a little. 'Two pieces down and twenty to go.' Twenty pieces. Eighty years.

He _really_ hoped it wasn't going to take that long.

Anzu tried to smile a little. She really tried to. 'Sure. Two pieces. Now for gods sakes put them down again will you? Before you drop it and lose them again.'

_**

* * *

**_

It's always tough at first but somehow we always end up fine.

* * *

Something was burning.

It wasn't a _hot_ kind of burning. Not really. It was more like the way that ice might feel if ice could take your skin off, only it didn't really hurt as much as that description made it sound. He was walking through the pitch black silence, searching for something –he didn't know what.

Jounouchi already knew he was dreaming but he couldn't seem to wake up anyway. The dream wanted to keep him there, maybe, and was pulling his attention towards a gap in the darkness. It lookeds like light breaking in through cracks in a dry stone wall and shining on his face. Like fingers squeezing through the cracks, determined and desperate. Like somebody trying to crawl out of a tomb. The dream didn't make much more sense than that, really, because he just couldn't make out anything more of it, no matter how he tried to. All he knew was that someone was there, hidden behind the walls and broken stone, staring out at him through a single glowing golden eye.

_The Puzzle_, Jounouchi figured. But that was pretty much all he could see of it. That and a thousand strange walls scattered all around him in a maze of bricks and darkness. Something he could see really clearly…

'…But can't see,' Jounouchi finished in a whisper.

Anzu was dozing nearby again and woke up when he whispered. 'Mm. Jounouchi?'

'Nothing Anzu. Go back to sleep.'

* * *

**TBC…**


	3. Chapter 3

**So. I made a boob. I wonder who's actually noticed? **

**Bakura in that last chapter there? Shouldn't be there. He didn't exist in YuGiOh before manga six. They didn't know he existed. **

**I now have a choice – I can either take this whole thing apart, scour it for Bakura references and edit them to make it seem like they haven't actually become real strong friends yet or been to the RPG game, but still know he exists and therefore he might try to communicate with them. _Or_ I can label it as a shoddy AU and leave it at that. The latter, however, I don't want to do because it's just the kind of dumb excuse I hear in fandom far too often. It's not an AU point with a… well, a point. It's a mistake. It needs fixing. **

**So I'm going to go with the former and fix it – I haven't started yet and I'm going to post this chapter without having made that edit, so don't be confused. Those mistakes in the last chapter will be fixed soon. For now, I hope you can enjoy this chapter and forget about them. I'll let you know when they're changed. Thanks for your patience. Standard disclaimers apply. **

**

* * *

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**Chapter Three. **

_"Kaiba Corporation's newly Founded Kaiba Land Theme-Park opened to the Public on the twenty-eight of April. Within twenty four hours there had already been one incident of Missing Persons on the grounds. Rather than a lost child, however, this disappearance was of a high school student, and holds somewhat more suspicious circumstances. _

_Muto Yuugi is a sixteen year old student in his Freshman year at Domino City High School and vanished from Kaiba Land on the day of it's Opening on the twenty-eighth of April last month. Witnesses so far have suggested that his last known location was within one of the duelling rings located in the centre of the park. The closure of Kaiba Land so soon after it's opening is believed to be related to these events for police remain unclear on the exact details of the case. _

_The CEO of Kaiba Corporation, one Kaiba Seto, (the child prodigy who founded the creation of Kaiba Land, and who was behind the Transformation of Kaiba Corporation ago from arms and military dealership to games and computer technology software producers,) has declined to comment without the presence of a lawyer but did put out a statement to the press detailing how disheartened he was by the occurrence and expressed his sympathies to the family of the—" _

'Oh for God's sakes, someone turn it off.'

It was Anzu who turned down the volume. Jounouchi figured that all of them had _wanted_ to do it, but nobody could quite pluck up the nerve to move from their seats. In the end, just turning down the volume had been the best that any of them could do, which meant they were now all sat looking at the face of Sugoroku Muto on the screen, his lips moving with no sound coming out. They had been there to hear him make the statement in the first place and nobody –least of all grandpa himself– had any desire to hear it again.

'That's official then, isn't it?' Bakura said, evenly. 'The statement has been aired. You were all present. Now the story is out there for all the world to know about.'

'We did the right thing,' Anzu said, evenly in her trying-to-convince-herself-as-well-as-them kind of voice. 'They would've asked questions eventually anyway and we needed to say something about it.'

'Pardon me for saying, Anzu, but I don't exactly think this is going to stop the questions coming altogether.'

'No, you're probably right,' Sugoroku Muto flicked off the television with a weirdly loud _click_ before any of them could appear in a statement. 'But we can't answer them either way, you know that.'

'And if we say a thing about Death T,' Jounouchi added his first thought of the evening. 'Kaiba will probably get some of those goons of his to blow the hell out of all of us or something. You guys all know that too, right?'

'So? It doesn't matter if we all keep our mouths shut completely,' Honda scowled over at them from where he'd chosen to make himself comfy behind the sofa for the entire news broadcast. 'They'll trace it back to Kaiba Corp. one way or another. They've got to. It was the last place he was _seen_.'

'And you kids,' Sugoroku added, examining two pieces of Millennium Puzzle in his hands 'were also the last people he was seen with.'

'Not necessarily. They had a whole stadium witness to what happened in there. They're going to know something was up, aren't they? I mean even a bunch of card obsessed kids can't possibly be unobservant enough not to notice something was damn wrong at the end of that match.'

'Three words, Honda,' Sugoroku muttered, blankly. 'Theatrical Cover-Up.'

He couldn't see him, but Jounouchi could actually feel Honda deflating a little behind the couch. '…Oh.'

'Plus if that doesn't work, then they'll more than likely be bought off.' Ryou said it so blankly that everyone pretty much glared at him even if nobody actually meant to. Jounouchi just figured that they all felt exactly the same way that he did they just really weren't enjoying having their glimmer of hope stamped on every two minutes by someone else's stupid comments. 'Sorry, guys, but you know it's true. Kaiba could probably buy this entire country if he wanted to.'

'Better run for cover if he ever runs for mayor, then,' Honda snorted. 'God forbid a Kaiba whose even old enough to _vote_.'

That thought was actually seriously disturbing. Enough to make Jounouchi shiver a little.

'Where's the evidence that it was anything more than the public were told, anyhow? Ryou asked. 'A tragic accident at a newly opened theme park, perhaps, as a result of a badly planned theatrical stunt. Or perhaps just a missing boy who may or may not have last been last seen in that theme park –a point which nobody amongst us will be fully able to clarify or explain.'

Jounouchi blinked. 'Bakura, are you kidding? Kaiba fucking well _kidnapped us_! _And_ his brother nearly killed us twice before we even got into that freaking "theme park" of his.'

'But there's no evidence of that, Jounouchi. Nothing except your word.'

'You sayin' I'm lying? What, you wanna test me for poison or something?'

Bakura regarded him calmly and without any signs of taking offence. He had heard this story a dozen times from each of them and barely flinched any of those times. 'You know that's not what I'm saying, Jounouchi-kun. Though now that you mention it you probably _should_ have gone to a hospital and had some tests run as soon as you left Death T. It's doubtful there was any evidence left of poisoning by then, but there would certainly have been more chance than there is now. As it happens we have no solid proof or evidence of anything. Even the eye witnesses are unreliable, and the police wouldn't know what to think of the idea of a ten year old boy attempting to poison his houseguests.'

They all knew it was true, as little as any of them liked it. The silence hung like a thick blanket around them before Anzu jerked her head up. 'But _we'll_ know,' she said, harshly. And we'll let other people know, somehow. Somebody has to listen; somebody has to know the truth.'

'Somebody probably already _does_, Anzu-chan.' Four pairs of eyes turned to look at Sugoroku in surprise. 'Bakura's right, you know. You can't make a place like that alone, now, can you? Can't set up the necessary scenarios, can't _hire_ people, not without _somebody_ knowing. And then there was the stadium, all those watching kids…' he was shuffling a deck of duel monster cards in his hands, and Jounouchi glanced at that, uncertainly, because he could've sworn the old man hadn't had them a moment ago. 'That boy, Seto Kaiba… he _wants_ rumours and whispers and mutterings about this boy, Yuugi. Wants to prove what Seto Kaiba is to the world –the king of games who can take apart any opponent.'

'Only we know that he isn't,' Honda said, frustrated.

'Won't matter in the end, boy. Money. You'd be surprised what it can buy. Everything from your freedom to your life. Eighty years old, you'd think I'd have already seen darn well enough of that in my time.'

He'd never seen Sugoroku Muto angry before… well, at least not like _this_. It was kind of disturbing, actually. Just like seeing Anzu losing her will power or Bakura raising his voice.

He wasn't sure he liked it much.

* * *

He didn't actually notice Sugoroku Muto had come into the room behind him until he heard a tactful cough from the direction of the door. Everyone else had gone home a while ago, and Jounouchi had spent the last hour or so staring at those notes from the box the Millennium Puzzle came in, trying in vain to make out some of the squiggles that he figured were supposed to be handwriting. Maybe they were written in another language, or something…

Mister Muto had obviously already decided that nobody was planning on sleeping just yet because he was holding mugs and Jounouchi was pretty sure he could smell coffee.

'Shouldn't you be watching your heart or something, gramps?'

The grandfather sniffed in that old, irritable way of his. 'It's my daughter's job to tell me that, Jounouchi. You're supposed to be a typical teenage male and let me get away with it.'

Jounouchi suppressed a grin. Okay, fine. So the grandfather with the could handle coffee better than Jounouchi could himself. He could deal with that. 'Even before this whole mess started and I became grandfather to the most peculiar young boy this side of Tokyo, I had a fair few frights, you know. It happens, in my line of work and let's not forget I was still around on this world when Hiroshima happened. I've seen enough. I doubt a little caffeine is going to push the ticker over its limits.'

Jounouchi blinked at the unfamiliar name and Grandfather Sugoroku must've noticed this because he said: 'you _do_ study history, don't you, Katusya?'

Jounouchi hadn't realised Grandfather Sugoroku even knew his given name. Hearing him say it out loud like that was a little weird.

And anyhow, history had never been Jounouchi's favourite subject. He figured that he slept through a lot of last term's lessons. '…Sure. The whole Atomic War thing? I remember bits of it, I think…' Seeing that this response wasn't gaining him much appreciation, from grandfather Sugoroku, Jounouchi kept blabbering. 'They killed a whole lot of people, is what I know. To end the war. And then people started getting sick, and the war ended… more people died, or maybe the war ended _after_ the dying stated. And they dropped another bomb… or maybe another two. Or maybe it was just the one, I think. Um… unless that was the other one we learned about which wasn't _actually_ a bomb and… ' he trailed off uneasily and Sugoroku remained still for a while.

'So. You're not exactly passing that one, are you, Jounouchi?'

'Uh,' Jounouchi let himself smile a little sheepishly. 'No. Probably not.'

Sugoroku huffed a little, shifting across the room to mess with the objects scattered about Yuugi's desk. 'Wouldn't worry. I figure I must've failed that one a fair few times myself.'

Jounouchi stared at him. '…Really? You? But you're an _archaeologist_.'

'Yes, I know. Strange isn't it? Anyhow, you're not allowed to tell Yuugi.'

And there it was again –someone referring to Yuugi as if he were still very much here and very much along them. Jounouchi liked that. He wanted that to _keep_ thinking like that, because he knew the second that any of them surrendered to the idea that Yuugi was dead, they really _would_ lose him all together. It was kind of a weird piece of logic, but it was keeping Jounouchi from going insane, right now, so he was going to go with it.'

He took the cup, pretended not to wince when he drank it. _Really_ had to learn to handle his coffee. 'So… were you were in that? The bombing, I mean.'

'No, I wasn't. Not exactly anyhow. I was a kid, barely old enough to know what'd happened beyond the fact that somewhere in the country the Americans had bombed us. And _bombs_ were these big, scary bad things our parents always warned us about when we went to play in the fields. Never made much sense to me, then, why we kept on _throwing 'em_ at each other…

'Still, I was old enough to see the aftermath. This one was especially big and bad, apparently. Years to come and nothing but pain and suffering and the formulation of more reasons why we shouldn't trust the west.' He shrugged. 'Don't know about all that now. Half my stock here comes from America. _Duel Monsters_ comes from America.'

Jounouchi threw the notes back in the puzzle box and moved back to sit on the bed. 'So everyone's forgotten? About the past?'

'Hm. I'm not sure if forgotten is too strong a word for it, Jounouchi. No, not forgotten. None of those people _deserve_ to be forgotten about. But maybe it still _needed_ to be. At least a little bit. History, my boy, is a big mess of things we need to remember but also need to forget and can't quite make up our minds about. To me, the past is as important as the future. But still, the past is the past.' Jounouchi stayed quiet, waiting. 'They say time heals all wounds.'

'Yeah, but some wounds run deeper than others though, right? So it takes more time to forget them.' Jounouchi brightened a little while making what he thought for him was a really smart point. Sugoroku Muto seemed to realise this as well and actually blinked at him a couple of times before continuing.

'Humph. Yes. Sometimes. Though perhaps it depends on your experiences of those wounds, though. I feel worse about this whole mess right here right now, and… about my face being plastered all over an evening news report about just one human boy, than I did about all the thousands of boys and girls who must have died when they bombed out those two cities. Because I was closer to the boy, you see,' he looked up, and Jounouchi noticed for perhaps the first time how very much the old man's grandson looked like him. 'I didn't know any of those fifty thousand people. Not really. I knew… I know Yuugi. I know my grandson.'

Jounouchi wasn't sure if there was a point to this conversation, or whether Grandfather Muto was having one of those bouts of "when-I-was-your-age" syndrome, so he figured he had better just keep his mouth shut and see if any other explanations were going to come his way, and eventually they did. Sort of.

'You know, I _gave_ Yuugi that puzzle,' Grandfather Sugoroku said. 'So maybe I'm the one who got him into this whole mess in the first place. After all what kind of person gives a kid something like that? True, all those stories I sued to tell him about collapsed tombs and dead archaeologists were just what they were – stories that I used just to try and scare him into giving the damn thing back… Now don't look at me like that, Jounouchi, that thing was worth a lot, archaeology wise. Lord knows why I thought to give it to an eight year old in the first place. Sometimes the past – especially a past which could cause nothing more than pain and fear and distrust –is something better left forgotten.'

Jounouchi didn't quite know what to say to that. He wasn't good at this kind of stuff and, like he said –he was failing history.

'That… that's not true, gramps.' Grandfather Muto gazed at him. 'The bit about it being your fault I mean. I mean the bombing thing, sure… I'm not exactly sure what you meant by that but… but I figure it's something we need to hang onto.'

'Well, when you do find out whose fault this whole mess is in the first place, Jounouchi,' he said, giving Jounouchi's shoulder a pat as he turned around to leave the room, 'be sure to give them a good kick in the pants from this old man. I don't think my old heart could take the stress…'

_Not that you wouldn't try it anyway, gramps_, Jounouchi thought, half amusedly, as he leant back on the bed and promptly fell asleep, in spite of the coffee. Damn stuff never worked for him anyway.

* * *

Jounouchi admitted that he didn't know _exactly_ what'd happened.

There _had_ been a little bitching going on that morning, but he had figured it was all over and dealt with by the time they went to lunch. He'd figured Anzu was too tough to respond to a few dumb school girls saying she was dating Bakura because her last "boyfriend vanished off the face of the planet and that the last time he was seen was with her, going into that stupid new theme park.

He'd figured that he was just being overly sensitive (which was weird, for him) and that they hadn't _actually_ meant to imply that Anzu had something to do with aforementioned not-a-boyfriend vanishing inside that stupid new theme park….

…He also figured that he was going to have to start refiguring how he interpreted the female mind all over again. Preferably before he next saw Shizuka. The stream of insults was barely coherent, but he managed to make out a "stupid…" and an "arrogant" and a "bitchy, evil little…" somewhere in the middle.

'_What_ did I do wrong?' Anzu was yelling louder now, and this time Jounouchi could hear exactly what she was saying. Her eyes were welling up, and her hands were clenched into fists and she was shaking just a little more than was normal for Anzu Mazaki.

All of this weird behaviour was really starting to worry him, actually. Because between Bakura's twitchiness and Honda's being a jerk and Anzu's temper, _nobody_ had been acting like themselves these last couple of weeks. Except for him, that was.

At least he thought he was acting like himself. As much as he could do, under the circumstances.

Anzu throwing a fit of rage over something she wouldn't tell them about in the first place was just about the last straw for Jounouchi and he left the building, slamming the door rather violently as he went.

He figured a few short seconds later, that that probably wasn't the _best_ move he could've made. By that point though it was a little too late for regrets and a little too early to be going back in the store. He wasn't quite pitiful enough to just walk right back in there and besides, if Anzu was anything like a normal girl she was going to take a good few hours to calm down right now and woe betide any guy who tried to talk to her in _that_ state, whether he wanted to or not.

So Jounouchi ended up just wandering the streets for a little while.

Actually, for a _long_ while.

Okay, then –until long after the sun had set and the high street had closed up shop for the night. He actually walked all the way around half of Domino City. For some reason that little voice in his head had suddenly gained a weird sense of direction, because Jounouchi could've sworn it was leading him around all the places he hadn't been to in ages and really hadn't thought he'd ever go again.

The old warehouse, for example.

Yeah. Fuck. Jounouchi didn't actually realise he was walking there until he was standing just outside of the doors and looking up into the broken sheets of corrugated metal overhead. It was totally the fault of the little voice inside his head that he was here in the first place.

Why _was_ he here in the first place, anyway?

The little voice in his head didn't offer him an answer and Jounouchi couldn't really think of one on his own. He didn't like this place. This was the place where people nearly died. The place where yoyos suddenly turned into dangerous offensive weapons and glass was thrown in people's eyes and fights turned into lethal massacres with everyone aiming for just one person. He knew he should just leave. Not that he was superstitious, or anything, but only bad stuff could come from this place.

So he couldn't explain why he instead walked through the doors and into the darkness.

It looked as if some people had been there since the last time Jounouchi saw it. Not that he could be totally sure –the last time _he'd_ been there, he'd been sort of half unconscious and not really focussing on anything except for the boy with the bright purple eyes who'd been stopping his head from cracking against the concrete.

And Jounouchi really, really _didn't_ want to think about all that. Because to this day he'd never known exactly what'd happened. It wasn't until months later, after he learned about the Other Yuugi, that he realised that whatever had happened in the warehouse in the time between him passing out and waking up with his hair standing in even weirder spikes than usual and static electricity running all over him, it hadn't been a pretty sight. The Other Yuugi, Jounouchi thought, was probably more than a bit of a psychopath.

Not that it mattered either way, now… After all, there couldn't be an _Other Yuugi_ if they didn't _have_ the first one.

'…The hell're you?'

A metal can hit the ground to the left of Jounouchi's foot. He looked up in the direction it'd come from, thinking that now it was his turn to think "_what the hell_?". 'Could be in bit trouble if this ain't your turf, you know.'

Jounouchi felt the old street sense flaring. Which was kind of cool, because at least it was a distraction from all the other thoughts that were working on turning his brain into jello right now.

'Maybe I don't give a damn whose turf it is. Who's asking?'

After a few moments Jounouchi's eyes had gotten used to the darkness and he finally got a proper look at the kid. The Rintana School uniform, the haircut, the cigarette hanging from his bottom lip… Jounouchi knew who this guy was, sort of. The fact that he was from Rintana and was hanging out in this particular warehouse told Jounouchi exactly who he was dealing with. There was no doubt that this was a member of Hirutani's gang.

Then again as far as Hirutani's gang members went, this one looked a little… small. And wimpy. _Definitely_ wimpy. Jounouchi could tell, even from this distance, that the little punk was twitching like one of the Mexican jumping beans they sold on the counter in the Kame Game Store.

Jounouchi knew a coward when he saw one.

'Who wants to know?'

Standard introduction. It had to happen. Both of them back talking and handing around the question over and over until one of them could think of a better retaliation. It seemed to Jounouchi like it'd be nothing more than a weird kind of ritual "hello", if it weren't for the inevitable gut punching and bleeding that always seemed to follow. So maybe it was less of a ritual "hello" and more of a ritual "_get the fuck out of my area unless you want to fight me for it_".

'Nobody who wants to bother with ya…' He shrugged. 'You're on your own.' It was an analysis of the situation, not a question. Jounouchi had known from the second he came in here that there was nobody else around. Which was kind of odd, because street gangs always hung around in packs, they never went out to places like this alone, like this guy.

'Maybe I am… you wanna find out?'

He _was_ on his own; Jounouchi told himself. There was no one hiding in the shadows waiting to leap out of the dark or anything like that. In fact, he was kind of surprised that he'd missed this kid in the first place. '_You didn't notice him because he didn't _want_ to be noticed_,' the little voice in Jounouchi's head told him. '_That's the reason you didn't think this kid was there. He was hiding and you didn't expect him. You're out of practise, Jounouchi, my man_.'

'Yeah. Right. So I could kick your ass right now and nobody would know about it.'

The other boy stiffened a little in the shadows, a bad imitation of Hirutani's "_I'd like to see you try you little freak_" pose. It didn't work on this guy at all. In a few moments, Jounouchi figured they'd probably start throwing insults at each other, and then the circling would start. Each boy would start summing up whether or not the other guy posed any real challenge and whether he would have to knock a few teeth out before they decided to call it quits. Good. He needed that. A newer part of Jounouchi's mind said the excitement he felt because of that _wasn't_ right, because he didn't _do_ things like that anymore, but Jounouchi didn't really care. He needed to blow off the excess steam he's built up from walking around all of these places full of sick memories. He needed to forget about news reports, puzzles and sick CEO's and their freaky little brothers. He needed to forget about watching his friend screaming inside a locked glass box as monsters killed him over and over again with Jounouchi unable to make a move to help him. He needed a _fight_ for no other reason except because he _could have one_.

Except that tonight, it seemed, it wasn't going to happen. Because this guy really _was_ a total weed. Jounouchi imagined he was one of little punks who stood behind Hirutani and provided fucking _moral support_ while the tougher customers beat up their current targets. This guy had probably been standing in the background watching as Hirutani took a charged cattle prod to Jounouchi's gut.

Another drink can hit the ground, but it was far away from him this time, a dismissal, rather than a challenge, Jounouchi still had the adrenaline burning, though. Could feel it pulsing in the veins beneath his palms. '_Getting too worked up too soon, Katsuya, you know how much you'll pay for that if this guy turns out to be more serious than he looks_.'

'…You're Jounouchi, aren't you?'

'What's it to you?'

'Nothing. It's not worth my time either way.'

'Punk,' Jounouchi muttered, but some of the tension was leaving his shoulders and letting them slump again. There wasn't going to be a fight this evening. After all, there was no real point, anyway. (He felt a little sorry about that, a little upset that he wasn't going to get the chance to burn off steam by kicking some hot-shot's ass all the way to Tokyo and back again.)

'Don't even _bother_, man. I _know_ it's you. I was right there the whole time, you know.'

There was something… weird about how the other guy as talking now. It was kind of like he'd gone from put-on street-gang tough-guy attitude to bored and uncaring in the space of ten seconds.

'They got me to hold the cattle prod, once,' he went on, still talking in monotone. 'But I didn't have the guts to poke ya. They would've gotten me for that later, if things hadn't happened the way they had.' He sounded like he was no more sure of exactly what had happened than Jounouchi was.

So what? Jounouchi thought. Was he supposed to be grateful for his mercy, or something? 'Lucky you, huh?'

'You've got an interesting fucking definition of "lucky", you know that?'

'Still here ain't I?' It'd take more than just those sick-minded punks to finish off a Jounouchi, after all. He considered sitting down, but there wasn't really anything to sit on anyway, so he just stayed standing, hands in his pockets as he watched the boy in the darkness, waiting for his response.

'Yeah. Still there. Figure star head there had something to do with it.'

Jounouchi started to hope that this kid really was street-thug enough not to watch the local news.

'What's it to you?'

'Nothing much. It doesn't matter. So are we gonna fight?'

'What?'

Jounouchi bristled just a little because while he'd already worked out in his head that the answer to that question was no, his adrenaline was still pumping and he still felt like hitting something as hard as he could and that just totally confused him.

You know. Fight. Been a long time.

'Bet you never fought anyway.'

'You really think so?' His voice sounded even less like a challenge than it had before, and even though he couldn't see it, Jounouchi could imagine the boy's lips quirking into an almost smile.

'Little creep like you who didn't have the guts to handle a stun gun? Sure, you kicked the crap out of people. Bet the local kids were scared of ya.'

'Funny, man. Anyway there'd be nothing to fight for. There's no gang anymore, you know. Not after that star head kid came in and changed everything.'

Jounouchi's own lips tweaked, the adrenaline fading in favour of amusement. He wasn't surprised, really. He figured maybe Hirutani's gang would never be normal again. Not after Yuugi –or the other Yuugi – got to them. 'Yeah. He does that to ya.'

'Who? _That_ little pointy-haired freak? Yeah right. Gotta admit though, he was more balls than we gave him credit for, wasn't he?'

Jounouchi's shoulders tensed a little, but he knew his body was just looking for excuses to throw a punch, now, and be damned if the all-new-Jounouchi was going to be told to do by his stupid body and stupid fists. '…Yeah, I figure he is.'

The other boy sighed in a voice that kind of reminded Jounouchi of how grandfather Sugoroku had sounded yesterday evening, when he was talking to Jounouchi about war and history and being a grandparent. 'Well, since there's not gonna be a fight or anything, and neither of us have anything here right now we would wanna fight for anyway, I figure it's not worth staying around.' He sniffed. 'This place stinks anyway. I've got better places to be. I figure you do too, Jounouchi.'

Jounouchi didn't answer. The boy was standing up now, walking past him while chucking an already dead cigarette down on the warehouse floor. '…Maybe see you around the streets some time, cattle-prod boy,' the other boy said to him casually as he walked around him and headed to the exit. 'If you ever get back onto them.' A few seconds later and he was gone before Jounouchi could think of a convincing backtalk.

Jounouchi didn't realise until then that he hadn't thought to ask – or even wonder – just what that guy had been doing here in the first place, but the, perhaps it didn't really matter.

Still, he missed it a little, sometimes. Missed the days of spilled blood and cracked teeth and bruises covered up for PE lessons. Jounouchi frowned at himself. _Why_ exactly did he miss that right now, anyway?

_Because we need to remember the past_, a little-used part of Jounouchi's mind realised. _We need to remember the pain we caused and felt, because that way we can appreciate what the present gave us and why all that pain was eventually worth it. Or something like that, anyway… _

Maybe that was why he'd run away from Anzu – and he had run away, he knew., no matter what else he might want to try and tell himself – and come here to the warehouse. Because he wanted to remember the past and what had brought him here to the present, just so he could find the guts to look ahead and face the future.

The _present_ had given Jounouchi Yuugi and it had taken away the street fighting thug Jounouchi used to be in middle school, but just like it was important that nobody forgot about all those people killed in an eighty-year old bomb blast, it was also important that he didn't forget Jounouchi-the-street-thug.

Because maybe, in the end, it was Jounouchi the street thug _and_ Jounouchi-the-good-friend who were going to have to work together to bring Yuugi Muto back from Death T.

But even so, he was now totally going back to the game store to see whether Anzu needed hugging, or something, because street-thug Jounouchi wasn't going to be let out tonight, and back at home… one of his best friend's needed him. And he could deal with that. Even if it meant he had to put up with her trying to kick his ass the very second he walked through the door.

* * *

She did try to kick his ass the very second he walked through the door. Well, actually, she threw a ladle at him, but it missed and bounced off the door. He wasn't totally certain why

'Where the hell have you _been_, Jounouchi?'

…he wasn't quite sure how to answer that at first, so he. She didn't really look that much calmer than she had been when he left, but her face was more streaked with red than then. There was no sign of Tristan or Bakura in the house and he didn't know where Grandfather Sugoroku had gone. _No witnesses, _ he thought uneasily, as he tried to shift out of Anzu's glare.

' I. Uh… nowhere, I was just,' he swallowed, searching for a description that wouldn't make Anzu go crazy on him again. After all, it wasn't like he hadn't vanished from the face of the earth on them before, right? Surely she had to be used to it, by now. '…Just wandering around. Blowing off a little steam.'

'…_A little steam_?! What the _hell_, Jounouchi?! Is this how you're going to deal with everything from now on, huh? By running away from it. You charged out of the house I the middle of… of a _heated discussion_ and we didn't know what to _think_. Bakura was worried sick that you might have gotten yourself in trouble all over again!'

'…Oh. Yeah.' He swallowed. 'Just Bakura?'

'Oh, Jounouchi, you _idiot_!'

The next thing Anzu did was throw her arms around his waist. Except that she was still down on her knees with him now half leant against the leg of the couch. Her arms were reaching up as high as they could, but it was still like Jounouchi was trying to hug someone really, really short. He could feel her shaking all over again but he didn't ask her why she was crying into his jeans and shirt or why she had overreacted to this so freaking badly. He figured the answer would be too complicated for him to understand at this time on the evening. So instead he just let her stay there for a while, unconsciously ruffling her hair the way he did with Shizuka until she finally decided to move.

'Uh… Anzu?'

'L-look…' Anzu pulled back a little and held out her hands, fingers shaking. 'See? _This_ is what happens when you run off without telling us where, Jounouchi.'

She was holding at least four pieces of the broken Millennium Puzzle. Except that these four pieces weren't broken anymore. They were connected together to form the end of a pyramid. And none of them were the two pieces that Honda had already put together.

'You… you slide them round,' Anzu said in what was probably meant to be an explanation. 'The puzzle pieces, Jounouchi, they _slide_ when you touch them, so you can shift where they are without having to take them out again.' She sniffed, smiling at him blearily. 'I was just so angry that I had to do something with my hands so… so I went back to the puzzle. I just reached out and took hold of the pieces and suddenly I'd put them together. Just like that.'

Just like that.

There was a really old American movie Jounouchi had once seen with Shizuka when both of them were little. It'd been in English and they'd been too young to read the subtitles, but he still remembered the bit about the girl who made what she wanted happen just by wishing hard enough and wearing these sparkly red shoes that Shizuka had begged their mom to buy for her for weeks afterwards.

Just click your heels together three times, wish as hard and as long as you could, Jounouchi thought, and before you knew it, you were back in Kansas.

No way it could be that simple, could it?

Was just _believing_ really what they needed after all? Just like that?

_How could it be? Didn't work the last time and that's what got you all into this mess in the first place, isn't it?_ The little voice inside him commented. Well, fuck the little voice.

Who the heck's side was the little voice supposed to be on, anyway?

* * *

**I was a little uneasyabout the Hiroshima and Nagasaki references in this chapter (and the fact that Jounouchi didn't know that much about it), but I think it worked okay. Reviews are appreciated and don't worry, that big error will be gone soon. **


	4. Chapter 4

**Here's chapter four. Chapter two has now been edited to rationalise Bakura's existence. The upcoming story has also been edited to account for this. The usual disclaimers of ownership to Kazuki Takahashi apply. **

* * *

Chapter Four. 

'You know what your problem is, right?'

Jounouchi let the yoyo he was playing with fall into a walk the dog while glancing sideways at the conversation between Ryou and Bakura. Actually it as more of a one sided conversation with Honda doing all the talking and Bakura sitting quietly at the Game Store Counter and trying to take it all in. Pieces of the Millennium Puzzle had were scattered, as they often were, on the table top before them and Jounouchi thought for a moment about how weirdly normal it was nowadays, for all of them to have puzzle in their hands. Almost as if the pieces belonged there.

'It's because,' Honda continued to spout some wisdom. 'You're a _new_ guy. Even though you've been here for weeks already. Because people still don't know you and the thing is, asides from us, you haven't really got to know anyone. Nobody knows where to put you, that's the problem. That's why you have all these weird mental blocks when other people talk to you. You've gotta try and get out a little more, man. You'd feel a lot less hesitant about letting other people back inside your own flat if you let them know what to expect when they got in there.'

Jounouchi grinned at how ironic that sounded, coming from a guy who'd all but lived inside a game shop for eighty percent of the last month and a half, but he had already had his mornings' worth of argument with Honda today about who was taking out the trash can, so he decided not to mention this one. Besides, it wasn't often that Honda managed to hold anything near a full conversation with Bakura, so he wasn't going to ruin the moment. Not this time.

Bakura put down a puzzle piece he was playing with, and Jounouchi saw him wince. He wasn't sure why, though, and the glimmer of pain passed across Bakura's face so quickly that Jounouchi swore he must've imagined it. '…Get out more? I don't know, Honda-kun…'

'Don't be so timid, man. I swear you're like a doll sometimes or something. I mean, surely you can find something to talk about? You've got hobbies, right? Everyone has hobbies.'

Bakura shuffled in his chair. 'A few…'

'So? Share already.' Jounouchi decided to add to the discussion. 'Let us know about them, give us something to talk back to. Why not?'

Bakura shuffled again, reaching out to tap a puzzle piece idly with his fingers before Honda absent-mindedly pulled it away and started trying to force it together with another piece that even Jounouchi could tell it didn't go with. 'Well… they're rather unusual hobbies.'

Honda grinned, giving Bakura a slap on the shoulder. 'Heh, then you've definitely come to the right place here. Trust us, Bakura. You just stick with the one and only Honda, we'll see you right around Domino. You'll

'…if you say so, Honda,' Bakura was smiling in vague amusement as Honda rounded the counter and wandered off to the other side of the store room. They heard the clatter of the door opening and Jounouchi just had time to yell after him to bring back some more soda from wherever he was going. Hen he looked at Bakura and grinned. 'The One and Only Honda,' he mimicked, cheekily. 'Yeah, he's sure a one and only alright. And thank god for that.'

'I just don't think Honda gets it, sometimes,' Bakura said. 'It's not always as easy o interact with people, as you both seem to make it appear. The lives of other people around you pass you by so quickly that they don't often stop to notice you're there. And if they do notice you, sometimes it can be only for a moment. Not long enough for it to be worth getting to know you.'

Bakura had a habit of coming out with long winded weird stuff like that so Jounouchi didn't comment as he was kind of getting sued to it. Just as he'd gotten used to Anzu's need to boss them around and Tristan's bad taste in horror movies and Yuugi's constant inability to act like anything even near resembling a tough guy, even though a tough kid was exactly what Yuugi Muto always was, just that nobody had eve seen it. Maybe Bakura was like that, too, Jounouchi thought. Just someone who seemed small and quiet on the outside but really had something more inside of him that only guys like Yuugi could bring out.

'You got that right,' Jounouchi grimaces vaguely at the memory of a too short boy trying to grab a puzzle piece out of Jounouchi's hands as he held it way over the short kids head and out of his reach. Yuugi Muto could have told Bakura all about being that way. There was silence between them for a while after that.

'Yugi was odd,' Bakura said, suddenly. 'Wasn't he?'

It wasn't meant to be an insult or a retort or even a real question –he could tell by Bakura's tone of voice. It was just a simple statement of something they all knew was true. Not a good thing, but not necessarily a bad thing, either. Still, it was tricky for Jounouchi not to take things the statement personally. It seemed like only Bakura could say something like that _without_ making himself sound like a jerk.

'…You never knew him, how would you know?'

'It's just a feeling, really,' Bakura shrugged, folding his arms on the tabletop and looking absently around the store. 'Anyone who gets to live in a place like this would be very unlikely to be totally normal.'

'So you think he was a weirdo because he lived in a game store?'

'That's not exactly what I meant, but… Yes. Like me.' Bakura tapped the puzzle pieces again but this time Jounouchi didn't see him wincing at all. 'Maybe… maybe it was because of this. Do you think? Or maybe he was odd _before_ that. I keep thinking: how could a boy like the one you told me about do all the things he seemed to do? He couldn't be ordinary, so much as _extraordinary_. It's why you're all still so surprised,' Bakura went on, apparently aware that he was treading in some slightly dangerous waters in this conversation '…that he lost.'

Jounouchi didn't say anything. He just stayed quite, bounced the yoyo and waited for Bakura's trail of thought to head to somewhere where he could catch up with it.

'I know you all must miss him very badly, which is why I didn't say this at first. It's always there in your faces. It has been since the day I met you, because you're all waiting to find him again,' Bakura said that as if he were revealing some kind of great secret, keeping his voice hushed and his tone low. 'What makes you think that, though, Jounouchi? Why do you assume he's still alive after what you say he went through?'

Jounouchi didn't answer him for a long moment, not entirely certain how to answer.

'You believed it all, right, Bakura? What we told you, I mean. about Death T and the Kaiba brothers and all that freaky business with the chop man and the guillotine and…' he shuddered, forcing himself to meet the memory head on. 'The Duelling Box with the Death game inside it. You believed that we were telling the truth?'

'Of course.' He said that with such total conviction that Jounouchi almost believed him. If Bakura did believe them then no doubt he'd be the only one in town who ever did. 'Why… weren't you?'

'Heh. Nah, it was real all right,' Jounouchi smiled grimly. 'And _that's_ why I think Yugi's still alive: Because Kaiba's a total psychopath.'

Bakura stayed quiet for a moment or two and Jounouchi went back to his yoyo. 'I'm afraid I don't exactly understand…'

'It's not that hard, man, even I can get it,' Jounouchi said. 'It's like what gramps said to us about what Kaiba got out of all of this without so much as a warning. And about what he got by beating Yugi. He got to show it to us, y'see, that he was better than Yuugi was. That was his prize – the title of the greatest duellist. With Kaiba it's all about titles and… and possession. Ownership.'

Bakura didn't have anything to say to that; he just sat there, gazing at Jounouchi in something like surprise until Jounouchi started to feel uncomfortable. 'Think about it,' he went on. 'He's a jerk, but he's a jerk with money that gets to do whatever he wants to. Why would he just _kill_ Yugi? I mean, what would a dead body get him, anyway? I think Yugi's still alive, because if he wasn't, then there'd be nothing left to say that Kaiba ever beat him. There'd be no… proof.'

And that, Jounouchi thought ironically, was the really weird thing. Because Yugi –wherever he was– was the one piece of solid evidence they might still have for what Kaiba had tried to do to them.

He had gone to the hospital for tests like Bakura has suggested, to see whether or not they could pick up anything of the poison that Mokuba had tried to use on them the night before Death T. They'd had to make up some crazy story about Jounouchi thinking he might've taken some Grandfather Sugoroku's heart medication on a bet with a friend of his (Honda said that was actually kind of proud of how quickly he'd come up with that one), but the tests hadn't shown anything at all that the doctors had thought to mention to them. (And there'd been a few awful moments when Jounouchi could've sworn they wanted to stick this weird tube down his throat to get the non-existent tablets out again.)

So they were sure, now, that they had no proof whatsoever of anything. Which sucked. The only piece of the puzzle that could make anything they said about Seto Kaiba believable if they ever had to tell police was Yuugi. Grandfather Sugoroku was already getting tired with trips to stations and unexpected visits from investigators asking all those annoying questions they'd known from the start would come, and that they'd also known they wouldn't be able to answer.

The CEO of Kaiba Corp was a fifteen year old billionaire, running the largest multimillion company in all of Japan and who probably owned half the planet. He'd been scrawled across newspapers and magazines ever since he was ten years old, being hailed as everything and there wasn't a single bad word Jounouchi had ever head them say about him. Grandfather Sugoroku was right. They needed some serious damn _proof _before they could say a single thing against Seto Kaiba. Yuugi _was_ that proof. Just that was just another good reason why they had to find him alive.

'If that's true, Jounouchi,' Bakura said, raising his head from its bowed position. 'Then… where do you think Yugi might be now?'

Jounouchi let the Yoyo drop onto the floor, and found he didn't have an answer for that one. Not until he turned around and stared at the puzzle pieces lying on the surface of the counter, that was, and then the answer just seemed to come to him, like something out of a dream that he had suddenly remembered. 'Not sure exactly, Bakura, but we'll know it when we see it,' he said. 'And we know we'll get him out of it.'

* * *

He was back in the darkness again, only this time, it too ka little longer for him to work out that he was dreaming. It hadn't changed much from the last time that he was there. there was still the cold black stone and endless walls and corridors that seemed to have no ending.

_'…Are you there?' _

No answer. Jounouchi wasn't that sure who he was meant to be talking to, anyway. Somewhere in the distance he could hear the old sound of muttering-sobbing-laughing… he still wasn't certain which it was, and with every corridor he walked down the noise was growing louder still. He could hear his own footsteps echoing and once again in front of him, shards of light were creeping in through gaps between the stone. Only there were more gaps now, and bigger shafts of golden light.

When Jounouchi reached the dead end before the glowing wall, he knelt down in front of where the light was strongest and pressed his fingers to the cracks. 'Hey…'

Still no answer, but then sob-mutter-laugh had never been louder and Jounouchi could feel something soft and feathery brushing against the tips of his fingers from the other side of the stone.

_'…I haven't lost yet, you know... Jounouchi?' _

Jounouchi woke up with a piece of the Millennium Puzzle clutched so tightly in his fingers that it left an imprint on his palm.

* * *

So. It was only now, weeks after her Death T employment and quitting, that Anzu worked out that she'd lost her job. Again. And that meant getting a new one as soon as was humanly possible.

'Just so long as I don't have to work in a burger bar. Not again.'

Jounouchi shrugged. 'Kinda understandable, I sure wouldn't wanna deal with anymore masked gun men, you know?'

'Who said anything about me being scared of being taken _hostage_, Jounouchi-kun? I don't want to work in one of those places because most of them are disgusting,' she wrinkled up her nose in what Jounouchi figured was disgust. 'Both in what they paid under eighteens and in their personal hygiene. I _swear_ that if you guys had any idea what goes into half of those burgers, even Yuugi wouldn't touch them.'

He doesn't comment on the fact that she just used present-speak. Or present _tense_ or… actually he wasn't sure _what_ the right phrase was (wasn't like he'd been paying that much attention in his Japanese studies lately after all), but whatever it was, it meant that she was still talking about Yuugi as if he were just away for the weekend and was about to walk back in the room or something. Still thinking of him as alive rather than… well. Rather than _not_ alive.

This could either worry him, or encourage him and Jounouchi was getting a little sick of downers, by now, so he decided to go with the latter. Because the longer time went by, the worse things got for him, but the easier they seemed to get for Anzu. Grandfather Sugoroku said something about time being a healer. That must've been especially true for her, he said, because now she could let the memories of the pain and fear dim just a little. She could focus more on the problem than what'd caused the problem in the first place.

'Happy today, huh?'

'You're the one who says we have to take little things as big victories. If that's the case, then I have six big victories right here in my hands,' she held her fingers out slightly, the connected puzzle pieces shining between them. 'Six pieces. You realise…' she smiled faintly at her own personal joke. 'That we're sort of beating _Yugi_ here? By four pieces and half a year. Its happening, Jounouchi. I can feel it.'

While also just handily forgetting, Jounouchi thought, that the last time anything had "happened" had been over two weeks ago in and of itself. The way Anzu tapped her hand over her heart when she said that stopped him saying anything aloud, though.

Jounouchi didn't feel all that healed _himself_, exactly. But he was focusing on the problem too. Like they were doing the same thing in exactly opposite ways. Maybe the night in the warehouse had done him some good.

'There's a trick to it,' Anzu said, evenly. 'And I don't just mean to do with putting the puzzle together, Jounouchi-kun. There's a trick to it in _us_. I'm sure of it. Something we have to act, or a way in which we have to think in order for the Puzzle to work for us. It's waiting for us to find the answers, just like it must've waited for Yuugi to. We just need to work out what they are.'

'Who knows? We tried pissing you off real bad, though. That seemed to work the first time.'

'Yeah, well try that again and I won't be held responsible for what happens to you, Jounouchi-kun,' Anzu smiled, slyly.

She was right, though, when you got down to it. Or at least, Jounouchi thought she was. They'd figured that maybe they solved the puzzle better under different circumstances. Like when they were angry, maybe, or scared. Yuugi had mentioned something like that too –that on the day he solved the puzzle he'd felt like total crap and that that'd just made him all the more focussed. It was a crazy idea, but then, they'd tried just about everything else anyway.

Anzu hadn't exactly appreciated their reasoning. Or the ice cold water that Jounouchi had poured down her shirt in an attempt to get her angry.

Women could be so freaking hormonal.

'Maybe some of Yuugi rubbed off on us,' Anzu shrugged. 'Or maybe you aren't quite so bad at puzzles after all…'

'Hey!'

'…But whatever the reason, something's happening. You can feel it too, can't you? Every time you hold a piece of the puzzle in your hands. You know he's there. You can see it in the shine.'

_Yeah, like light breaking in through cracks in a dry stone wall_… Jounouchi's mind whispered at him, softly.

Anzu was kind of right, really. Jounouchi tried not to let that knowledge make him shiver. But it did.

'He's still there,' Anzu whispered, touching the puzzle softly. 'I think… I think they have to be. Both of them. It's like you said Jounouchi, things will be alright again, if we can put the puzzle back together, and Honda was right –every piece we get is just as important as the rest.'

Wishful thinking, Jounouchi thought. But what the hell, when wishes and hopes were all they really had to go on anyway.

'Speaking of pieces,' Bakura said, quietly. (He seemed to do everything quietly, though Jounouchi had noticed he perked up a tiny bit when he knew that females weren't anywhere in the vicinity.) He patted the wooden box he'd brought into the store with him that morning and had been holding firmly on his lap ever since. 'I was going to show you these…'

Jounouchi looked up, his interest piqued but at the same time hoping whatever was in that box of his, it wasn't going to be another freaking puzzle.

It wasn't. When Bakura opened the lid of the box, three tiny figurines stared back at him, with strange white eyes held in wooden frames. A small monster with too many arms, a short, decorated woman and something that looked kind of like a a dragon with a human's head where the lizard's should be. All of them were tiny, too, as if they must've been carved with tools that were way too small for any normal person to handle. He reached out to take one from the box and Bakura hesitated for just a second before letting Jounouchi reach out and remove the little lizard from its container and stare at it. 'Man, that sure is freaky lookin'…'

So this was that weird hobby Bakura had been talking about.

'I guess it depends on your definition of freaky, Jounouchi. The one in your hand took three hours just to get the shape right.'

'Seriously? Wow… Well, I meant that they're a cool kind of freaky, you know? All painted and stuff…' he stared at the one he held in his hand, squinting at it through one eye. '…What are they?'

'RPG figurines,' Grandfather Sugoroku grinned, reaching out to take another piece carefully from Bakura's hand. They both seemed to share this ridiculously careful way of handling them, as if they were made of something precious. 'Role Play. Been a long while since I had any of _these_ in stock, boy. You create them, do you?'

'Yes… it's a hobby,' Bakura smiled faintly. Jounouchi figured he was pleased at having found someone else who could appreciate a good piece of carved wood and plastic or whatever the heck these things were made of. Then he looked at Jounouchi and offered an explanation. 'They're used in Role Play Scenarios. People use these characters as their avatars in a fictional world. One player is the dungeon master and he controls the story and what the other players have to do and everyone has one of these pieces for their own to act as their identity within the RPG game.'

'So you mean it's like a computer game, or something?'

'Well yes. You can get a lot of videogames like that now, but the original RPG games were played around a table.'

'They need to start bringing back things like this,' Sugoroku sighed a little wistfully. 'Just don't make them the same in those videogames. Never have done and never will.'

'So you made all of these yourself, Bakura?' Anzu smiled, admiring the female statue in her hand before handing it back to him.

Bakura hmmed a little and nodded. Actually if Jounouchi didn't know better, he could've sworn Bakura was blushing. 'I was thinking, about what Tristan said. I don't handle people well and… games like this are about people taking on different roles to who they normally are. I could organize a group game at school some time. I have to say my gaming persona is… a lot more confident than I am.' He looked over at Honda.

'See that's what I'm talking about man,' Honda grinned proudly. 'Socialising. You need to show these things at school. Girls are all about the artsy types. Trust me, they'll be falling over their feet for ya.'

'C'mon, Honda they're already fallin' over their feet for him.'

'Just so long as they enjoy the game, I don't really care much what they think about me,' Bakura said. He said that bit more cautiously than he'd ever said anything before, while rubbing one of the figurines gently in his fingers. 'In a way the characters are kind of like puzzle pieces in and of themselves,' he said. 'It's extremely difficult to play the game properly if you only have one piece. And anyway, where's the challenge in that?

See, Anzu pointed, triumph shining in her grin. '_Bakura_ agrees with me on this one. You guys were trying to get _me_ to cheer up, right? Well, I'm trying to cheer up. And we can do this. I know we can. If Bakura here can face down his perpetual fear of the opposite gender…' (Bakura was definitely blushing now) 'Then we can put together one little puzzle.'

Jounouchi shook his head, but he was still grinning and not really looking up from the lizard piece he was holding in his hands. 'Man, you girls confuse the hell out of me, you know that? Can't make out whether you're up or down half the time. I'm serio—'

Jounouchi suddenly stopped talking.

He was still looking at the figurine he was holding in his hand, more intently than before now, because as he looked, it seemed for a second like the small white eyes were suddenly covered over with green, before going white again. Almost as if the figure was…

'…Blinking. Whoa, oh-kay that's…'

'Jounouchi-kun?' Bakura asked. 'What is it? The Liard man hasn't been broken, has he?'

Jounouchi opened his moth to answer that no – the lizard man wasn't broken, though it was entirely possible his brain had just been. This, he figured, was the effect of not enough sleep and too much badly-made coffee. He was hallucinating about blinking statues. 'Man, I could've sworn it…' he glanced at Bakura for explanation. 'I really did.'

Bakura looked just a little bit confused himself. 'I'm afraid you must be mistaken, Jounouchi. These figurines don't have movable eyes.'

Jounouchi gingerly placed the figure back on the desk while opening his mouth to protest but the actual sound of that protest never had a chance to come out, because a few seconds later Honda returned with the soda and thoughts about blinking Dungeon Models and whether or not Anzu was right (as she usually was) were thrown aside in favour of carbonated beverages.

* * *

**TBC… **

**I really need to check these chapters through more thoroughly before I post them… ah well. **


	5. Chapter 5

**Not that happy with this chapter, but I'm sure it can be improved upon. Hints are appreciated in that department. Standard disclaimers apply. **

**

* * *

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Chapter Five. 

_'In the beginning there was nothing. And the Lord said "let there be light," and there was still nothing, but now you could see it.'_ –Terry Pratchett.

There was a larger hole in the concrete somewhere. He knew there _had_ to be, because there was so much more light creeping out onto the stone than could possibly be coming from the gaps Jounouchi could push his fingers into.

Only the more Jounouchi looked at it, the less and less it looked like actual _light_. Not light, but not really pure darkness either. More like some poor substitute for both of them. He remembered from one of those rare times he'd been paying attention in physics class, when he'd been told about how when your brain didn't understand what it was seeing,. It would interpret it the best it could. So this stuff appeared as sort-of light, because that was all Jounouchi's brain could understand it as being.

So what was it really?

Jounouchi stepped backwards, stood upright and sighed.

_'Jounouchi.' _

_'Yeah, yeah, I hear ya,'_ Jounouchi hadn't meant for his thoughts (he knew whatever it was, it could read his thoughts, so he didn't have to say things aloud) to come out quite so dryly but they did all the same._ 'Not like I've forgotten. And you remember me, right?' _He paused to look around the darkness, even though there wasn't much to look at. '_I've been here before. A few times, now that I think about it. Don't really get what you want with me, though._'

He kept on looking, all the same. Kneading the stone, as if it might turn to putty beneath his fingers and allow him to rip it open. '_It's like a cage_,' he decided. '_A cage made of stone and rocks instead of metal, like a tomb or a grave or something. So what's it keeping inside? Is it you?' _

The Dark-Voice gave him no reply. Jounouchi vaguely considered another option._ 'Or maybe that's not it at all… maybe it's keeping me out, instead?' _He felt a little further along the darker patch of the wall where there was far less light and fewer gaps. This wall seemed to trail off into jagged darkness after a while, but Jounouchi had never followed the corridor to see where that darkness led to. He had a feeling he wouldn't like what he found there if he did.

The silence continued until Jounouchi grew impatient. Usually something would have happened by now, even if that something was just him waking up and bolting out of the bed or chair or wherever the hell he'd been sleeping in at the time. _'C'mon. You can give me just a little hint, right?' _

_'No. No hints in this game.' _

The reply came out of nowhere, so suddenly it almost scared him. Except that Jounouchi knew this was a dream, so he shouldn't be afraid. He should reach in again through the gaps in the stone, feel for the touch that had brushed his earlier. He should be strong enough to peel back the rocks and feel for life behind the stones and substance behind the darkness.

_ 'I'm not afraid… believe me, I'm not.' _

…Jounouchi wasn't certain just who he was trying to convince. Perhaps the Dark-Voice. Perhaps himself. Somewhere in the darkness, he can almost feel a chuckle.

_'No. No fear.' _

Jounouchi wasn't sure if the voice was being sarcastic, but either way its tone was… frustrating, and annoying, and just a little creepy. Kind of like how Kaiba laughed when he won the Death T tournament.

_'Kaiba Seto…' _

'Wait you… You know Kaiba?' Jounouchi screwed up his eyes, focusing against a shaft of light that had chosen to glare right into them. There was no answer. 'Man, who are you anyway? What the hell am I doing here?'

It figured. By now he hadn't expected a reply.

_'Yeah. Laugh it up. Just you wait till I find you in there…' _

He gripped the wall tightly beneath his fingers, hard enough that it would've hurt him if he hadn't just been reaming, and the laugh continued as he pushed in vain at the stone and rock._'…Just you wait. Then we'll see whose laughing.' _

* * *

'Hello? Yeah, this is the Muto residence. Who's talking?'

Ten pieces down and twelve to go. Jounouchi was about ready to start calling this a miracle. It was the only one they had to go on, after all.

'Really? Oh… okay I'll get him I… wait, no hang on a sec, tell me first, I'll handle it better.'

He couldn't remember who it was that put the last few pieces together but he figured it was probably him even though he can't remember _doing_ it. Honda said that he felt the same when his two pieces came together, so either they were both total nut jobs or maybe it was normal, really. Just something that was bound to happen when you messed around with ancient powers like Millennium Puzzles and the other spirits hiding inside of it.

Jounouchi wanted to tell Yuugi about that, and it always irked him something awful, how close he came to sometimes doing it. Talking to him as if he were right there with them. surely, though, every piece put together brought them another step closer to that becoming true.

'Care to tell me why, exactly? I mean why even bother sending somebody round if we already _know_ they've got nothing different to tell us? Who _are_ you, anyway, some kind of secretary? You're a freaking secretary aren't you? They couldn't even be bothered to get off their assess and come to the—!'

'…'

'I'm what? You've got to be kidding me I… no, I have _not_ been _drinking_!'

But ten pieces weren't twenty two. And Jounouchi was kind of starting to understand exactly why Anzu hadn't seemed so happy with the first two pieces they put together. Ten whole pieces and he didn't feel like celebrating. Ten whole pieces and he felt like it was only one.

'_No_, I don't want to talk to a freaking desk worker; I thought you had actual _police officers_ working on this?'

'…'

'What? _I'm_ being uncooperative? Man you're the police (or your bosses are supposed to be, hell only knows who _you_ are), the only people being uncooperative are the freaks you haven't even questioned, and no I will not be questioned again for the fiftieth freaking time already, lady; I already told you what I know?'

'…'

He knew he shouldn't have looked at that stupid calendar. Then he might not have realised just how long it's been since Death T and how not even the police made regular calls now.

'Oh, for fuck's sakes, it's my _best friend_ we're talking about, lady, why the hell would I _lie_ about it?'

It was the first call they'd made in two weeks today and Jounouchi was glad he was nearer to the phone. Not just because Grandfather Sugoroku really didn't need to hear some snot nosed receptionist telling him in not-so-direct terms that there was no way in heck that they were going to find his grandson (like hell there wasn't, Jounouchi growled), but because Jounouchi had needed to yell at someone about it anyway. Who better to yell at than a secretary?

'Are you going to let me talk to whoever's actually in charge of this freaking investigation or what? I'm going to hang up here, lady.'

'…'

'Don't be dense, of course I wanna know if you found anything new, the problem is you haven't found anything new, have you? This is another freaking warning call and that's it. There's a guy who's only had a pacemaker for a month living in this house whose grandson vanished off the face of the planet! You really _think_ we need anymore calls saying "_sorry we don't know anything else but we're all still trying really hard_?" I don't call that useful!'

A month. More than a month. Nearly two, in fact. Kaiba Corporation had been on the news almost every night since then. Some fuss about the Kaibaland theme park and Jounouchi couldn't wait for them to knock the hellhole down at last.

Except a part of him didn't want that at all, because if Kaibaland went, what other chance did they have of finding him?

'_No_, I don't live here, which you'd already know if you weren't just some dumb message carrier. It's Jounouchi, damn it. Jounouchi Katsuya. Can't you remember the kid you had in an interrogation booth for fifteen two-hour sessions? Way.. .you're not the secretary are you? where'd she go?'

'…'

'Okay, fine. I'll talk to you then mister officer. You'd better hope you're working on the Muto case because be damned if I know…'

'…'

'I was so not interrogating your secretary. Nuh-uh. I know all about interrogation thanks to you guys

'…'

'Uh, no, no I'm not shouting, man. That isn't shouting. _This_ is _shouting_!'

'…'

'Fine, whatever, good freaking day to you as well, jerk! Why don't you just lemme know when you have some _real_ information?'

The little voice inside himself was telling him that it wasn't fair to say that. It was also telling him that screaming at police officers down the phone line wasn't the best way to get things done but Jounouchi was so accustomed to telling the voice to shut the hell up, by now, that he hardly even cared. Street Thug Jounouchi was straining at his heart threads now, yearning to burst out and start beating up his surroundings for everything he's worth. Jounouchi wanted to let him. Jounouchi wanted to scream and yell and punch something harder than a pillow but softer than a brick, soft enough to yield to the power in both fists.

There was a knock on the door.

He decided then and there that if it was Honda, he then he was going to thump him. Not hard, just enough to let the stress out. Which was a horrible and sickening thought, but it was one which harked all the way back to the old days with Rintama. Honda punched a lot of things, too, just to get his frustration out. Everything from people to telephone posts. Sometimes Jounouchi had had to hit back and then they'd end up fighting with each other, pummelling until both were bleeding.

They'd buy each other sodas afterwards.

Just like the Rintama Street-Thug Rituals – a necessary punch-out coupled with acceptance that this was what and who they were and this was how they _dealt_ with that and nothing –nothing– was every going to change.

_'…Except it did change. Yuugi changed it.' _

That thought softens him up, just a little. Enough so that when he reaches out to open it, his hands aren't shaking so much, and lack the need to curl into fists. _Things change. _Even now, _knowing_ that has power. So when he opened the door and it actually was Honda standing there, clutching a large box in one hand and smelling like a takeaway.

'Hey there. Guess who got a new job today?'

Jounouchi took a deep breath, though of Yuugi, and let it out again.

'That girl goes through jobs like she goes through us with that ladle, man. Maritto's?'

'Nah. The new American Style place next door.'

'I figured. We got those for free then, right?'

Honda tossed sauce packets in his direction and Jounouchi caught them with one hand. It was kind of amazing that he didn't burst the packets since clenching his fist again was pretty unavoidable. 'She gives discount. But it comes out of her wages so she says we shouldn't go there often. Who're you shrieking at?'

'I _wasn't_ shrieking.' Jounouchi swallowed after he said that, but now he couldn't deny it. Just how loudly had he been yelling anyway? Girls shriek. _Hanasaki_ shrieks.'

'So?'

'So I'm _not_ Hanasaki an' I wasn't shrieking.'

Honda's raised an eyebrow. 'Whatever. You know, you were actually surprisingly coherent, for some guy who was _shrieking_ his lungs out. Or for Jounouchi Katsuya in general.'

Jounouchi huffed before stealing the takeaway bag out of Honda's hands. '…Are we gonna eat that stuff or what?'

'It figures. Now I _know_ you're cheesed off cause you haven't even tried to bite back. Then again I would've known it even if I hadn't heard you screaming down the streets, now wouldn't I?' The half-smile he wore was sure and knowing and made Jounouchi almost want to hit him again, but the feeling was different this time. Less about anger and malice and more about Jounouchi's old days with Rintama. 'You shouldn't get so pissed with them anyway. It's not like we've trying to help them.'

'What do you call toying with the creepy dark magic puzzle every time we wake up on a morning?' Jounouchi shoved the packets in the trash and didn't bother with looking for another. 'We're doing more than they could even think of doing, right? We want Yuugi back? We find Yuugi ourselves.'

'I suppose the "freaking secretary" told you that one?'

'Not in exactly those words. Close enough. And it's as far as we're gonna get with those guys. Kaiba probably bought them off a long time ago.'

'Going a little far there don't you think, man?'

'Speak for yourself, man, ever get your _jacket_ back?'

'…Point taken. Guess that was your brainwave for the day. So now what're we going to talk about 'till Anzu gets off work?'

'Beats me. Just not the police. I can't stand to hear another word about those bought-out sleaze balls. If Kaiba's not paying them then I'm a junk card.'

'Uh…You're a _what_, now?'

'Junk Card,' Jounouchi shrugged before downing half a soda in one go. Getting angry always made him thirsty. 'It's what they call the Duel Monsters Cards that are so weak no serious duellist would ever use em, least not according to the magazines they've got out in the store. Stuff like the Kuriboh

'They make cards which are deliberately sucky? Honda frowned into his takeaway box. 'Why would anyone do that?'

'What else man? Money. The more crappy cards people get the more new ones they buy trying to get good ones.'

He knew he should probably lay off the duel cards. They remind him of too many times he doesn't want to remember, but he couldn't help the fact he still liked them. The fact that they were just about the only thing he hadn't tried to blame lately for this whole screwed up mess.

Who could blame a bunch of cards?

Anyway, he had a deck now. Not the best –Grandfather Sugoroku wouldn't let him take the stock unless he bought them first– but it did its job. He kept on thinking about using it on Kaiba and turning his freaking blue eyes into mush, or something. It was the only good dream he'd been having lately.

'Junk card. Yeah, you know maybe that works for you.' Honda split a sauce container of his own, taking way too much care about it and giving it far too much of his attention. 'Figures to me they'd at least have given em' one purpose, though. What good's a duel card if you can't use it? They'd waste more money _making_ them.'

And that was where the strain of conversation was abandoned, they way pretty much all their conversations were, these days.

No sense in Honda and him beating each other up so long as he was feeding them both tonight anyway.

* * *

Grandfather Sugoroku didn't exactly smile a lot, these days, so when the old man had casually suggested that Bakura bring some of his new figurines along to display in the Kame Game Shop, Jounouchi decided not to mention the fact that he didn't think many people would be that interested in RPG's that didn't work via a controller and a TV screen.

Plus, Bakura _was_ pretty good.

'Where did you learn to make these?' Anzu asked, gazing at a delicate winged horse figurine resting in her hand.

'I couldn't say exactly,' Bakura shrugged, carefully balancing a final model in its place in the window. 'They just sort of came to me over time. I was getting tired of buying flimsy and substandard pieces when I went to game stores, so I decided to make my own.'

'And what exactly is _flimsy and substandard_ about _this_ game store, I'd like to know?'

'Oh! Nothing at all, I—' Bakura dropped his sentence in the middle as he noticed the look on Grandfather Sugoroku's face and realised the old man was joking. '…Never mind.'

'S'okay, Bakura, you'll get used to him. He only gets this way if you let him near the coffee. Kind of like Jounouchi, but with sixty years more experience and tolerance.' Jounouchi only feels slightly puzzled by the fact that Honda would say such things concerning Yuugi's grandfather while he's standing in the room with them but wouldn't so much as breathe out of place in front of Jounouchi's father.

…Then again, Grandfather Sugoroku wouldn't throw beer bottles at him for it. 'Man, I'm taking that one as a compliment. Partly 'cause I don't just feel like beating you up too badly today.'

Honda grinned. 'I'd like to see you try, Jounouchi.'

'Watch your tongue anyway, boy. Those sixty-plus years happen to give me senior authority here. And that's not the way you stack those shelves, Honda. We're looking for pyramids here, not trapezoids.'

'There's a difference?' Honda blinked, and Jounouchi also decided not to mention that even _he_ knew the difference between a triangle and a trapezoid (or at least he knew what the first one looked like and could probably work out the rest from there). 'You know you guys are lucky it was either this or babysitting, otherwise I wouldn't have really cared about the trapezoid.'

'What, the one with the issues again?' Jounouchi asked.

'Pardon?' Sugoroku blinked between them for a moment.

'Nephew,' Honda muttered, and that seemed pretty much as far as his explanation was going to go, so Jounouchi added to it a little.

'A creepy, weird _perverted_ little nephew,' he snorted as he placed down Bakura's figurine. 'I swear he never took his eyes off Anzu's chest the whole time he was with us.'

The grandfather seemed… a lot less surprised by this than Jounouchi imagined a lot of their other parents would've been, but then again, he _was_ Grandfather Sugoroku. '…What's with you kids and who you know?'

'You have no idea, Gramps. The kid's a total lecher in the body of a two year old, and that's the mildest way I can think to put it. What's the matter anyway, Honda. He still throwing a hissy fit?'

'Hissy fit is a mild way of putting it,' Tristan said mildly. 'Don't know what the heck is wrong with the kid. He's been this way ever since… ever since, won't settle down for anything. And guess who gets lumbered with watching the kid and having him turn their room into a battle zone?'

'Well,' Anzu put in, stepping back from a precarious tower of models and praying it didn't decide to topple. At least certain things seem to have faded from the kid's memory, given current circumstances.'

Honda coughed quietly, but Anzu still heard him and snapped her head around as if it were attached to springs, connected to his shoulders. 'Well the thing is he…He hasn't actually forgotten.'

Anzu's eyes glinted in a way that both Jounouchi and Grandfather Sugoroku knew was code for "back-away-before-I-blow" Bakura wasn't quite so knowledgeable and so was a little but surprised when Jounouchi pulled him several steps backwards by his collar. '…What?'

'Well, your name came up…'

'Oh, _god_,' Anzu looked about ready to throw the box she was holding in Honda's direction. 'You have to be kidding me! I can't decide which of you is more of a creep!'

'Hey _I'm_ not the one who wants a bath with you!'

Anzu ed a figurine down just a little too hard on the tabletop. Bakura winced. 'You're the one who _volunteered_ me! Honda Hiroto if you think I'm going within an inch of that creepy little lecher-kid and a bathroom at the same time, then you've got another damn thing coming!' She let out her breath in an irritated sigh while Bakura continued to stare at them, looking utterly confused. Jounouchi made a point to explain this all to him later. 'You shouldn't be such a jerk to him anyway.'

Jounouchi and Sugoroku almost seemed to blink in concord and Honda's mouth opened with a sort of "guh?" sound.

'Don't get me wrong,' Anzu went on. 'I think he's the most disgusting toddler I've ever met in my life, but that doesn't change the fact that he's a kid who had an idol. How would you feel, Honda, if the person you thought was the coolest guy in the entire world, turned out to be a murderer?'

'Why?' Honda said, in a tone which Jounouchi couldn't quite decide was suggestive or just stupid. 'Who'd he kill?'

They stay quiet for a while after that, pondering over Anzu's slip of the tongue that sounded too close to a confession for anyone's liking.

'What Yuugi would've said right now…' Honda muttered, smiling.

'Yuugi wouldn't have said anything,' Grandfather Sugoroku replied. 'Yuugi would have been far too busy nosing around the new shelf displays and trying not to blush or meet eyes with Anzu given the current line of conversation.'

His face tweaked into a sad, half smile, and Jounouchi made another mental note to buy himself a couple of those figurines.

Not that he'd ever get to use them

* * *

It was the third call Kaiba Mokuba had made to them in less than a week.

It couldn't be anymore irritating if he were making reverse-call charges. Jounouchi was running out of patience, Honda was running out of tolerance, Anzu was running out of excuses, and grandfather Sugoroku's pacemaker was probably running out of juice. The second time, he had been the one who picked it up and _that_ had been kind of a messy conversation. There was a new unspoken rule in the household that somebody was to be closer to the phone than the Grandfather with the dodgy heart at all times of the day and night.

_'I figure it's important that you actually come and get them before they demolish that place already,' the boy said in the same slightly-bitten, impatient voice he always seemed to use. 'That uniform is expensive…' _

'Oh, fucking _God_, you have to be kidding me!'

_'Do I sound as if I'm kidding, Jounouchi Katsuya? I'm not your errand boy, you know.' _

Jounouchi's fingers clench around the cord of the phone. He figured that they had probably seen the broadcasts by now. Maybe Mokuba was freaking out about them and Jounouchi was happy to hold that worrying little trump card over the younger Kaiba's head for as long as he could. Turned out that _Street-thug_-_Jounouchi_ also had a tendency towards blackmail which he hadn't even known about. Anzu was standing nearby and mimicking the slamming down of a receiver with one hand.

'For the last time, we don't give a fucking _damn_ about your uniform. Also, Grandfather Muto said to mention to you that if you call again he'll go round that that fancy mansion of yours and kick your ass himself.' Okay, so those weren't Sugoroku's exact words but Jounouchi was going to let himself have just a little creative licence.

Anzu continued to signal, her eyes dark with irritation and confusion and the silence on the phone line hung on for at least half a minute while Jounouchi waited for the Kaiba to hang up. He didn't.

The sigh which echoed down the phone line was heavy, tired and insanely annoyed.

Which was… not what Jounouchi had expected. _'Oh, for god's sakes, Jounouchi, could you _be_ anymore of an idiot?' _

The insult came out of the blue, even for a Kaiba, and Jounouchi didn't happen to have a decent retort handy. The only thing he could really do, therefore, was to just stand there gripping the phone and fuming for a couple of minutes. Anzu stopped signalling at him to "just hang up, for goodness sakes" and started signalling for him to tell her exactly what they were talking about.

_'I need to speak to somebody who isn't going to just hang up on me or completely miss the point,'_ Mokuba went on, evenly_. 'You don't fit into that category, baka, as the last couple of weeks and half a dozen calls have made pretty damn obvious. Now, either listen to me closely, or hand the phone to somebody with another half a brain cell.' _

Jounouchi didn't let go of the phone.

_'Okay. Whatever. Just listen to me'_ Mokuba went on eventually, speaking slowly and clearly as if the line had suddenly developed static. _'It is very important that you come and collect Anzu's things from the storage area in _Kaiba Land Staff Entrance B_ as _soon_ as _possible_. If you _don't_ get your assess in gear _right_ now, then you won't have the chance later on.'_

There must have been something wrong with Mokuba's voice, or something, because Jounouchi could've sworn the kid was _whispering_ into the phone line.

'…The Hell, kid?'

Another sigh, shorter this time. _'You heard me, idiot. Don't make me repeat myself. You lost the first one, but maybe you can change that, now, can't you? Like you said. You deserve a refund. It's all part of the game, you see.'_

Game.

Jounouchi's brain was quick off the mark for once in offering a totally unnecessary translation.

'…The game?'

_'Yes,'_ Mokuba's tone was ever so slightly relieved now, and maybe just a little bit hopeful. Or was that Jounouchi's imagination?

'Wait! Hang on. We… we're still talking about uniforms, aren't we?'

_'Whatever, baka. I don't really care what _you're_ thinking of. I know what _I'm_ thinking of. And you have to come and get it soon or else things aren't going to get any better.' _

'And walk right back into your hellhole all over again.' Jounouchi's throat was dry for reasons he couldn't explain. 'Sure, why not? You think we're that stupid?'

'I'm strongly beginning to consider that you are. Get with the program, baka, we don't _need_ Death-T anymore. It's done its job. All that's left in there is abandoned rides and machinery. There's _nothing_ left. It's _empty_.'

Jounouchi wallowed before continuing. 'Yeah. _Sure_. Just us and the for the murderers, right?'

'No,' Mokuba said, seriously. 'No murderers, Jounouchi. If anything all that place holds is victims.'

Jounouchi's heart was hammering now, rising right up into his throat the way it did before a street fight.

'Damn it, Mokuba why are you…' _Doing this? Telling me that? What _are_ you telling me, anyway? What the hell is going on? What do you want? What do you mean? What are you trying to tell us? Just say already before Grandpa comes and slams the phone down._ All these things and more were treading on the tip of Jounouchi Katsuya's tongue but none of them came out properly when he tried to say them. His heart was still pounding somewhere deep inside his ears.

_'It wasn't me,'_ Mokuba said. _'That's what you'll tell everyone. I didn't have anything to do with this. You idiots just went back in there of your own accord. I didn't call you, not even once. I didn't tell you anything and I sure as hell didn't warn you to be careful. Understand, Jounouchi? Asides from that that's all I've got to say to you.' _

Jounouchi was hoping he was getting this right. 'So… we'd have to go round the back way, right?'

_'Yeah, because that's where they moved everything they didn't want. Into storage. There's a metal doorway into the main area. Used to be locked but I don't think we really bother anymore.' _

…Really, _really_ hoping. Hoping so much the phone was just a little bit slippery in his grip and he had to force himself to loosen his hold on the plastic. His fists were always doing things he didn't tell them to these days and this really wasn't a good time to get the shakes.

'Sure it's safe to go in there?' Jounouchi's narrowed his eyes slightly. 'No freaky madmen gonna leap out at us?

_'Like I said: No, not exactly, and I figure it hasn't been demolished yet so you can still get in there,' _Mokuba said. _'You'll have to be quick, though. Just a couple of days and it'll all be crushed to pieces. So hurry up already,'_ he said, with a little more force than was really necessary for someone talking about collecting a uniform. _'You'll have to get there before the demolition teams do. I'm not certain when that happens, exactly.' _

Jounouchi counted the heartbeats thudding thickly in his eardrums. 'We'll need a way in.'

_'What part of "it's no longer locked" don't you get?'_ Mokuba hissed. _'Besides even if it _is_, I can handle that. I'll leave a key somewhere, probably with a note or something, so long as you promise my brother won't find out. Oh, and while you're at it, Jounouchi? Honda there might want his jacket. Assuming it's still down there.' _

'…Sure.'

'Good.' Mokuba spoke in a tone of voice that almost seemed to say "now _you're finally getting it_." Then the younger Kaiba hung up on him, before Jounouchi could start to reply.

Jounouchi and Anzu exchanged a silent glance and neither of them said a word. Anzu's hands warming up a piece of Millennium Puzzle between them as if it gave her some kind of weird comfort.

He didn't wait more than a few seconds longer before picking up the phone to call Honda.

* * *

**TBC. **


	6. Chapter 6

**I'll be honest with you all. I'm really not happy with _this_ chapter, either. There's too much telling and not enough showing for one thing, but it just didn't feel like _quite_ the right time to jump into the action yet. There'll be some for you next chapter, I promise. For now, I hope this will suffice. Standard disclaimers apply, of course.**

* * *

Chapter Six. 

_'You wanna know where we're going this Friday?' _

The sensation in his head shifted noncommittally and so did the wall behind his back. He felt cold air against his skin. Jounouchi hadn't moved for a while, now. This time, instead of wandering, he'd chosen to sir quite still in the corridor, just around the corner from the wall which he knows is growing more and more broken, even as he sits here talking. _'We're all going back to Death T. Anzu and Honda and Bakura and me. Bakura's new, I mean... I guess you don't know him.'_

_'Him? Once. He is nothing but cold.' _

_'Says the little voice in my dream,'_ Jounouchi frowned in confusion because… Bakura? He was kind of quiet, yeah, but he'd never been that cold around them. Just a little on the creepy side. _'S'cept that isn't what you are, is it? That would mean that you're not real and… I _know_ you _are_. You've gotta be.' _

_'How would you know in a dream? Dreams are nothing.' _

Well, at least it sounded more coherent now. '_That's just the thing, I don't. But… I've been working on it. You just gave me another answer; you might say another piece of the puzzle_.'

The voice didn't seem to appreciate the joke. It was far too lost within his dreams. Whatever. Jounouchi wasn't so afraid of it anymore. He still didn't understand it, exactly, but the dreams were coming so regularly now that sometimes he couldn't tell when they began and the real world stopped. He thought Anzu might be worried about him. She said he kept dozing off in weird places. Honda didn't say much about that though, because he seemed to think Jounouchi could doze off anywhere in the first place. He just didn't used to have such weird dreams.

_'So. Anyway. Is that what you are?'_ Jounouchi asked, his eyes narrowing. _'Are you the spirit who casts those Yami No Games, talking to me through my head? Or through the puzzle we're putting together? I figured maybe you might be in there. Wanna clear that up for me?' _

No answer. At least, not for several seconds. But just as Jounouchi was about to say something else, the voice decided to gratify him with a response.

_'You imply a difference where none exists. I _am_ the Yami No Games.' _

_'Yeah, I get that bit. I figured you were. I betcha money when I wake up, I'll be holding the puzzle in my hands. That's how you're talking to me. Through the puzzle. Anyhow, it's... I need to tell you.__ It's the kid who told us. Kaiba Seto's younger brother. We think he's the one who knows where Yuugi is.' _

The instant Jounouchi said the word "Yuugi"; he saw and felt the light source just around the corner begin to brighten ever so slightly. The walls seemed to tremble, just a little bit more.

_'…So. I'm going to ask you one little question that I'd really like you to answer for once –should we trust the brat or not?' _

Nothing. '_Yeah… ain't that always the way_,' Jounouchi sighed and got to his feet, and by the time he's standing upright, the corridors are vanishing and the dream world is vanishing back into the smoke.

He only just has enough time to hear the voice saying one last sentence, sounding cold and lost and afraid:

_'There is no threat from those who are defeated.' _

Yeah, then maybe there's no threat from you, either, Jounouchi thought, shivering as the real world came steadily back into focus and he stumbled from the living room in search of a coffee, unaware that he'd been sitting upright in the living room, and that Anzu was watching him leaving and exchanging glances with Bakura.

* * *

'Jounouchi-kun… can we talk?' 

Jounouchi honestly saw nothing weird about Anzu asking that question. Not even because she was asking it in the middle of the night, having just woken him up from yet another of those really creepy and interesting dreams that seemed to have a habit of haunting him lately.

What _was_ weird about it, however, was the fact that she was asking _him_. Because the words "Jounouchi" and "can we talk" really weren't the kind of words you found following each other in a sentence. Not that she hadn't always been a talk-to kind of friend, but when Anzu was in her "we-really-need-to-talk-now" mode, the first person she usually went to was Yuugi. If Yuugi wasn't available (which he obviously wasn't right now), she'd go to Grandfather Sugoroku. And then Tristan. And Jounouchi figures that she'd actually rather go to somebody like the newspaper vendor before she even _thought_ about asking Jounouchi for advice on something.

As it happened, on this occasion, she wasn't after advice, and she sat down before thinking to ask whether he wanted to talk at all. Still it was already ten thirty pm, they'd made no progress whatsoever on the puzzle (just like so many nights) and he figured that he could use the distraction.

'I wanted to ask you… about Mokuba's phone call. Jounouchi… I don't think we should listen to him.'

Jounouchi really didn't expect her to say that, so he puts the puzzle pieces down and looks up at her with a "what the hell" expression.

Anzu started taking pretty quickly after that. Something about how kids didn't always understand the difference between right and wrong because they hadn't been taught how to deal with anyone's pain except their own. About the look she saw in Mokuba's eyes when he cornered Yuugi in Capsule Monsters. About the angry scowl on his face as Honda reappeared at Death T five, just in time to be forcibly removed from the building. And by the time she'd finished talking Jounouchi really had to think to catch up and was forced to place the puzzle he'd been messing with back on the table.

'So… what you're saying is that you think we shouldn't risk it? That Mokuba's still lying.'

'It took him enough calls to point out what he really wanted,' Anzu screwed up her eyes in what Jounouchi figured was probably anger. '_Uniform refunds_, Jounouchi. Why didn't he… he could've made it more obvious than that. We could've had Yuugi back weeks ago. We could've _found_ him. Now…' She swallowed and didn't finish.

'What're you saying, Anzu? Do you think Yuugi's gone? Altogether?'

No answer came as Anzu picked uneasily at the hem of her skirt. He'd never seen her do that before. It was a little weird. Then again Anzu had been weird in general these last few weeks. Jounouchi never knew where to start with her.

Jounouchi had to think about that.

'You're forgetting that kid saved Honda's back in Death T three, Anzu. He stopped the game then. Why would he have done that if he didn't wanna help us?'

'Of course he did, with the police going around!' Anzu practically yelled at him, and he could see in her eyes that she meant that. Because after all, hadn't she been the one who spent the last few weeks, doing their crying for them? 'Or… or I don't want that, I really don't. That's… that's why I'm saying this. I don't know how we can trust him; I've had enough, Jounouchi-kun. I've had enough of all the false hope. There, I said it. All of it too… I didn't mean to but…' She took a second to sniff and dab her eyes. 'Any comments?'

Once again, Jounouchi had to pause and think about it before he answered. Because there was nothing _wrong_ with what she was saying, except for the fact that he didn't want to hear it. He figured that this wouldn't be a very good time to go running for the warehouse again.

And anyway, he didn't need to. All he had to do was look up at her, and see the tears bubbling in her too-bright, too-blue-coloured eyes, and tell her what she already knew but was probably frightened to admit.

'Just one. Look at the table,' Jounouchi said.

Anzu looked down at the Millennium Puzzle, the put-together pieces they had so far didn't look like anything, much, but they were still beautiful, in a broken sort of way. 'There you go. I guess that there's your lifetime's miracle. Us useless little high school kids, putting together a thing like that. It's amazing, right? Not quite Yuugi-level amazing, but I guess that doesn't really matter…'

Anzu didn't say anything. She didn't look as if she knew how to. 'That's the kind of thing Yuugi does to people, isn't it, Anzu? You've known him longer than any of us, so you should know. I even walked away from a fight the other day. Sort of. Okay, wasn't really a fight, but…' Jounouchi let the sentence trail. His point was already made, so why ruin it?

'I know what you mean, Jounouchi,' Anzu sighed. 'I know everything we've seen him do since he put together the Puzzle the first time. I know… I know how he must've felt, going into Death T the way he did. We were all so confident… so sure he would.'

The silence hung and Jounouchi didn't say anything to break it. In the end, it was Anzu who did. 'I… I believe in Yuugi, Jounouchi.'

'Yeah. I know.' He had to believe her. They _all_ had to say it, whether they meant it or not. They didn't really have any other choices, unless "giving up" has suddenly turned into one.

'And… and I believe in Yuugi's power. It's still _his_, and it always _was_. Maybe that's why _we're_ able to fix the puzzle the way he did. I just…' Jounouchi doesn't push her when her sentence trails off into nothing. For once, he keeps his trap shut and waits for her to continue instead of jumping in with whatever he can think of. 'I'm not _sure_ it's a good idea. Because Yuugi's _gone_, because of it, and…' Another trail off and another silence. But this time, it was more because Jounouchi couldn't think what to say, more than that he was waiting for her to continue. 'The Other Yuugi _never_ loses. Not to murderers, not to monsters… not even to a Kaiba. Except that he _did_ lose, Jounouchi. He lost this fight, even with all of us behind him, and now who knows what that did to him? Or what it's done to _our_ Yuugi?'

Jounouchi doesn't want to think about that. He really doesn't want to think about the Other Yuugi inside of _their_ Yuugi. The Other Yuugi who was brought out (maybe even created) by the Millennium Puzzle. The Other Yuugi who drove people crazy and messed with their heads, and then just… lost it inside a clear glass box.

Jounouchi could understand why she worried.

'He was… amazing, wasn't he? The Other Yuugi. In Death T.' at some point, Anzu had vanished from the couch and reappeared besides him, snuggling closer into his arm in a way she'd never done before. He didn't complain. 'He sort of… he scared me in so many ways. But I was always still glad to see him there. I don't understand that at all.'

'Well, yeah, I mean if your type is the dangerous type…' the joke earns him a whack with the back of her hand.

'But seriously, Jounouchi. You know he's dangerous. What happened… to him? And what happens, when the puzzle has been put together again? What happens to Yuugi when… when we go and find him, tomorrow?'

All of a sudden, she sounded so sure that they were really going to find him. Jounouchi didn't understand Anzu at all these days. One minute so full of hope and optimism and the next acting like the world was going to fall. He's tired of their feelings being messed with like this.

But most of all, he's tired of asking the dream voice all these questions and getting only laughs and cryptic comments in response.

He kept trying to tell himself they were only dreams. But really, he knew better than that.

'So, just so we're clear… it's not really Mokuba you're worried about trusting, is it?'

Anzu stood up, releasing her hold on his arm and walking slowly towards the kitchen. 'No, it's not Mokuba Kaiba I'm worried about. It's the Other Yuugi that was trapped in that box.'

* * *

'The first time I met Anzu Mazaki,' Grandfather Sugoroku started this line of conversation not long after Anzu left. Jounouchi could only assume he'd been standing around and listening in and chosen not to show himself until Anzu was gone, and Jounouchi was sitting there alone with his head in his heads, trying to work out whether he should listen to the freaky kid brother of a psychopath or the best friend of his best friend who looked like she was cracking from pressure. 'She must've been about eight years old. Showed up on the doorstep, all red eyed one evening at some god only knows hour of the night to ask if she could stay with Yuugi.' 

Jounouchi looked up, not quite knowing where this strand of conversation had come from but whatever, it sounded like it was going to be an interesting one. He had a feeling somewhere that all of these arguments couldn't be doing the old man's hart any real favours, but be damned if Sugoroku would ever show that.

'Parents had been fighting apparently. The way they did a lot of nights. So she came out here because apparently she'd found out where we live through the Emergency Rota Tree. This meant that pretty much half the neighbourhood knew there were issues at the Mazaki household by the time morning came, of course, but the phone tree never got to me, so I just let the girl in.'

'What, you mean they're divorced?'

'On a long term separation, as far as I know. It's working. But back then, Anzu was around here almost every night. Yuugi just took it in his stride, acting like it was totally normal. Maybe he just thought it was. It wasn't like he'd had much experience with a traditional family unit. How was he meant to know it wasn't normal for parents to fight every night and send their kids to other people's houses? He might as well have never had a father and god knows his mother works enough hours to be lucky to see him once a week. And then of course she over compensates. Yuugi doesn't really get the usual kind of family system. He especially didn't get it when he was eight and I didn't want to embarrass the kids.'

Divorce. Jounouchi could relate to that. He just never thought he'd be using it in order to relate to _Anzu_. She always seemed like the good girl to him, who had this ideal little family. He'd thought maybe that was why Yuugi needed her, too –just so _something_ in his world would be _normal_ and have normal worries and fears and dreams about travelling to dance in America.

'She'd always end up here in the end. I could set my watch by her, most nights. Even though I swear she must've had dozens of little girl friends at that age. I didn't really understand, at first, why she always ended up at Yuugi's. I can only imagine that this tiny little kid –and if you think he's short now, Jounouchi…– somehow must've made her feel _safe_ even though he couldn't make so much as a move to protect _himself_ most of the time. Gods, Jounouchi, she believes in that boy more than any of you can ever imagine. Trust me, I've seen it happen. Saw her changing right before my eyes from spoiled little brat to someone you'd adopt in the blink of an eye.'

They should have a name for that. Call it _the Yuugi Factor_, or something, because Jounouchi didn't know anyone in the world who could have that kind of effect on people. Except maybe the _Other_ Yuugi, and the effects he had were all the more… disturbing.

'So… I don't get it. What's she scared of?'

Sugoroku Muto raised an eyebrow that way Yuugi used to when he knew how to explain things, but wasn't quite sure why he _had_ to. 'Believing,' he said.

It took Jounouchi a couple of hours to work out what he'd meant by that. By that point, he had to go down to the store and find the grandfather at the counter so they could continue the conversation. He stood there messing with an on counter box of yoyos and watching the grandfather count out the takings. 'So… she's scared to believe in us finding Yuugi because of what happened the last time? Because of Death T?'

'I imagine that's it. You put all of your faith in something and promise it's going to last forever, Jounouchi, but reality doesn't work like that. The Heart of the Cards,' he patted the deck that happened to be lying out on the table before him. Jounouchi knew it wasn't his own, because that one had been ripped to shreds when they were leaving Death T without Yuugi.

God, Jounouchi wished they'd gone back for them.

'…It's only as strong as the heart of its owner, right?'

Grandfather Sugoroku regarded him seriously. 'Doesn't that scare you, just a bit, Jounouchi? if you break the cards, what do you do to their heart? What do you do to their owner's heart? All your belief and it wasn't enough.' Grandfather Sugoroku's face is more than just serious now. He's actually looking close to distraught. 'It's something I've never seen before. Something in Yuugi failed during that duel. If we don't find him and discover what that was, it might never be repaired. But if we find him then Anzu has to face it.'

'So you think maybe Anzu's scared?'

Grandfather Sugoroku shrugged. 'Maybe she doesn't want to find out that she's the part that made him break.'

'Well that's a dumb reaction. Anzu? Seriously, you kidding me?' Jounouchi couldn't get his head around that,. Because if there was anyone who believed in Yuugi with all her soul then that person sure as hell couldn't be anyone but Anzu Mazaki.

You know that. And I know that. Try telling it to the little girl who I sued to find on the steps on the store at funny hours of the evening because her parents were fighting each other out of home and daughter, hm?'

Jounouchi let out a nervous breath, the yoyo dropping, forgotten to the floor. 'Course she's scared, gramps. It scares the living crap out of me as well.'

'And you deal with that the way you deal with that. Now, Anzu… personally, I think she's a runner.

'But Anzu's never run away from us.'

'No, she hasn't. Sign of what a tough cookie she is, really. She needs to run away, just like she did when she was eight years old, but since she met you boys, –all together I mean here, not just Yuugi– she never _has_. Do you understand what that means, Jounouchi?'

Jounouchi understood what it meant, but still, he stayed pretty quiet about it.

* * *

_'Hey… are you listening? I need to know something…'_

Silence greeted him for about the millionth time, but by now he had learned to work out in advance whether or not the voice waslistening. Right now, he knew it definitely was.

He had been looking at his Duel Monsters deck –the one he just built with Grandfather Sugoroku– just before he had dosed off. He knew that the voice, locked in the shadows inside of him was watching the deck being put together, never quite capable of reaching out and touching it. The walls were still too thick and solid for that. And as he stood there and looked up at the hard stone wall with larger shafts of light than ever peering through the cracks (the gaps in the stone were so wide now he could almost see clearly right through them, had the light not blinded him from the other side). He knew that it was listening to him.

_'I… I need to know about your heart. Think you can tell me a little about that? if you're what I think you are, then… maybe.'_ Jounouchi let his thought drift into nothing.

Something was different in the darkness today. He could imagine he heard footsteps, treading steadily around him, at a distance. 'I guess maybe… you just don't have one.'

The voice's reaction to that statement wan't what Jounouchi expected, exactly, but it had been what he was hoping for. He could feel a bubble of what must have been anger, pulsing gently beneath the stone.

_'Yami No game,'_ the voice whispers again. _'Yami… no…'_

It was almost like the voice was struggling to think, Jounouchi realised. Trying too hard to pull itself together and address Jounouchi properly. Jounouchi trembled as he felt its prior steadiness breaking down around him. _'…That is what I… am.'_

'_No, you're not. You're more than that. I might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, man, but I know that much. We all know that. We saw Yuugi changing in Death T_…' Jounouchi stood upright and clenched his fists tight. In the real world he can feel his hands clench that little bit tighter around his deck, even though he knew he was still dreaming. So maybe this wasn't a dream after all. Maybe it was more like a vision or some kind of freaky hallucination. Whatever it was, Jounouchi knew it was real. '_You need… to tell me who you are. Maybe then I can help. Maybe we can put the puzzle back together._'

The sensation of laughter rocks through the walls in a single tremble, but Jounouchi sensed that the voice was more sad than amused. '_No. Not you_.'

'_What's that supposed to mean? We've been doing fine.' _

_'You were not… chosen. You are not hm. I do not protect you, friend.' _

_'Funny thing to say don't you think? So am I your friend or aren't I, huh? What am I to you exactly?' he paused and took a deep breath. 'What's Yuugi to you_?'

The voice in the darkness didn't seem to know how to answer that one, and Jounouchi wasn't sure whether he should feel afraid or triumphant by its hesitation. His mentioning of the name "Yuugi" had prompted the same reaction in the voice as it had done the last time. '_Like I said… we're going to get Yuugi back soon. We're going to make things right again. Maybe then you can find out from hi_m.'

With that, Jounouchi opened his eyes on the real world, and continued to stare at the deck of cards clutched tightly in one hand, and the puzzle piece he held in the other. The voice in the darkness seemed to have nothing more to say to him.

* * *

Anzu was boxing up a pizza delivery and not really paying any attention to whose pizza it was supposed to be when he walked in the door. 

The lunch time rush meant that she missed him, at first. It was difficult to focus on so many things at once, so even he remained oblivious, until he was right in front of her and she'd been about to take his order. Then every bone in her body stiffened and she felt the hairs of her neck stand on end the way they never had around a child before. No one had ever looked more out of place in a local Domino Pizza Parlour.

At least he wasn't wearing those ridiculous clothes. Still, yeah. This was just _brilliant _timing.

'You go through your jobs fast, Mazaki.'

He waited in the queue, just like everyone else, and he was still short, so no wonder she had missed him.

He didn't come in places like this often, Anzu could already tell that much. He sure as hell hadn't come looking to make an order, and that meant he had come here looking for someone. Anzu knew that somebody was her.

'We need to talk,' Mokuba said.

'I'm working now,' the words were out before Anzu could stop herself, but she had no intention of taking them back, even if she could have.

'Then take a break. Anyway, isn't paid work supposed to be illegal for most high-school students here?'

'Not all of us can live in mansions playing and toying with whomever we please, Mokuba. Anyway. I only just _took_ a break,' Anzu lied through gritted teeth.

Mokuba stared at her firmly for a moment, and when he did, Anzu felt her resolve waver. Because he just didn't look like the Mokuba she remembered from Death T-3 anymore. Actually, he looked totally, ridiculously normal. Slumped and bowed beneath jeans and shirt and without a single Kaiba Corp logo to be seen anywhere on his clothing. He was wearing one of those pull-on hats too, hiding half of his mop of hair.

He looked, Anzu realised eventually, just like something a cat had dragged in. 'Mazaki, we're the ones who are _paying_ your bosses their wages in this place. Don't draw any more attention to this than there already happens to be.'

Anzu cast an uneasy glance over her shoulder towards the member who is currently staring at them over a pile of half-made pizza, and she sees him nodding at her uneasily.

How much of this whole damn city did Kaiba Corporation _own_, anyway?

They chose a seat beneath the window, quickly cleared for them to sit (either for the employee or for the employee of the manager. Anzu wasn't sure but she didn't really care.), and Mokuba told her why he was here.

'Just like all the other times, I'd appreciate your not mentioning it to anyone. Not like it would do any good anyway.'

'Okay, fine. But what about those guys?' Anzu muttered, curious in spite of herself. 'What happens to them if they let slip you've been here?'

'They won't. If they did, they'd all lose their jobs and any further hope of getting a job in this city,' Mokuba said, dryly. 'It's a risk I'm prepared to take since your baka is too much of a fool to do a single damn thing right. I had to talk to you. Before Friday.'

Friday. Anzu knew what was happening Friday, and the thought of it both thrilled and terrified. 'How can we really trust you, Mokuba? That's the only thing I'm wondering. After all this… why would you help?'

'You know what I'm here to tell you, right?' Mokuba looked at her and Anzu nodded, ignoring the sodas that one of the employees had just placed on their table. 'You know I'm here to ask you for help, regarding a certain Yuugi Muto.'

The first thing Anzu really wanted to do (not that she'd ever imagined she was going to have this opportunity, much less that he'd seek her out) was ask him why, exactly this had happened. It seemed a pretty sensible question and she figured she was owed an answer.

'Because you're the only one who can do it, that's why. I've already _done_ you a favour, you know, and I didn't _make_ Yuugi get in any boxes. If my brother knew I was talking to you… You don't want to know what he'd do, Mazaki, but I figure you could take a pretty good _guess_.'

It took all of Anzu's self control not to leap to her feet and yell at him. To yell that it wasn't his older brother Mokuba had to be afraid of.

Somehow, though, she kept her cool. Because despite it all, he _was_ still just a kid and Anzu was getting a little tired of being angry with everyone.

'Mokuba, _tell_ _me_. Where. Is. Yuugi?'

'I've already told you. You finally worked out that much,' Mokuba leaned back in the chair, scowling in a way that made him look just like the young, spoilt child he was. '_You_ should've picked up the phone the first time. My brother _can't_ know that I'm here,' he went on, cold and serious. 'And if he finds out, I'll know about it, and you'll soon know what _I_ can do in the time it takes him to revoke all my privileges and toss me out of the company.'

Anzu sat still and considered her options. Not that there were many of those. The odds were that fixing the puzzle _wasn't_ going to happen in time for this Friday (which was only thirty seven hours and twenty four minutes away by Anzu's counting), and even if it did, she had no idea what good it would be. And then, this kid was _dangerous_, wasn't he? Or at the very least, he was more than prepared to _be_ as bad as Seto Kaiba needed him to be. Maybe he was just a kid, doing what he wanted to and not understanding the ethics involved, but that didn't chance the situation. He was a dangerous little boy, and yet Anzu was sitting here having _soda_ with him.

'What I need to know is how my big brother won that duel.'

It seemed almost like a silly question for Mokuba Kaiba to be asking. Seto Kaiba won because he was Seto Kaiba, and possibly because he cheated. What more was there for him to know?

'Don't you have recordings of that? Anzu couldn't help but sound cold. 'That whole match was broadcasted, remember?'

'Maybe, but we never kept most of the tapes. Those we have are always with Seto, and anyway,' Mokuba kicked the chair beneath the table in an act so disturbingly childlike that it sent a chill to Anzu's spine. How could this _be_ the same Mokuba as before? 'Broadcasts can be manipulated as much as you want them to be from the outset. I won't get any answers from there'

'So what answers are you looking for, Mokuba?' Anzu asked softly, poking at her drink with the straw.

'The same ones you are, Anzu Mazaki. What went wrong in Seto's duel With Yuugi.'

Anzu didn't exactly understand. She kept wringing her hands beneath the table, trying to work out what Mokuba could mean. Surely a win for Seto Kaiba had been a win for his brother, too? Unless of course, Mokuba had been like them – wanting Yuugi to win the duel.

How could that be, though?

Could he have turned against his brother? Anzu couldn't think of any other reason why he'd be helping them, unless this was all some kind of trap. Another sick trap set up just to drag them in.

But Anzu was tired of thinking like that, too. And anyway, why would Kaiba want to bother with them when he already had what he wanted? So for now, she decided, the old hope was better and let out a breath she hadn't actually realised she was holding. 'He's alive then, isn't he? Yuugi's alive.'

'You thought he'd kill him?' Mokuba blinked in what she could only assume was surprise, though how he could actually _be_ surprised at that, Anzu had no idea. 'Maybe he would some other pawn, but not a one like Yuugi, Anzu. Not the person he put so much hard graft into destroying in the first place. Yuugi was an important conquest for him. You really think he'd throw away his favourite toy like that?'

Favourite toy.

If Anzu had been entirely disturbed before, now she was shivering in her too-thin pizza-joint uniform.

'I don't understand what you want of me, Mokuba. You're going to have to explain this further. What do you think went wrong in the duel?'

'I said I don't know,' Mokuba scowled deeply. 'I just… Yuugi did something. To me, and then if he'd beaten Seto… I think he would've done it to him, too.'

Anzu pretended she couldn't feel her heartbeat pounding. 'What? What did you think he'd do?'

'Look at this,' Mokuba said, eventually (clearly having waited until some of the tension had drained from her face before he started speaking again). He reached one hand out across the table, turning it so the palm was facing up. Anzu looked down with just a little reluctance.

That was when she saw what Mokuba really wanted to talk to her about.

Most of Mokuba's fingers were black. It looked as if a straight line had been run across his fingertips with tar, about the height of a yen-note. When Mokuba turned his hand back around, Anzu could see the mark, spread over half of the back of his hand as well, curving into the shame of fingers. As if somebody with their hand painted with ink had taken a hold of Mokuba's hand and pressed the black ink into his skin.

Anzu frowned, gently reaching out to touch the younger boy's fingers. 'Is that… permanent?'

'Yeah. It started appearing on my hand after we escorted you… After you _left_ the Kaibaland Theme Park. It keeps getting darker, too. You see what it is? That's the place where Yuugi's hand touched me.

'I haven't… felt the same since then. It's like… like Yuugi made it _different_. Like he took something out of me.' Anzu stared uneasily at the dim, black skin of Mokuba's hand. It reminded her of a series on lines drawn with a permanent marker on their flesh, now no longer visible. But Mokuba's marks were as bold and clear as ever. The marks, she saw, that he must have received when Yuugi reached into the Death T-3 penalty box and pulled Mokuba to freedom.

The noisy throng of the takeaway seemed to have faded into all but silence. 'Looks like your little Yuugi Muto's taken a part of _me_ too, Anzu,' Mokuba said, his whisper punctuated with a cold smile. 'I don't know what it is, and… I don't know what he made me see. What he's changed in me. But he did it, Anzu. He took it away by defeating me, and I want it _back_.' He leaned back further in his chair looking every bit like the frightened child he was and withdrawing his hand away from her, hiding it within his sleeve. 'I want… my older brother back. If Yuugi had won… I don't know. Maybe I would've gotten what I wanted.'

Not a murderer or spiteful killer, Anzu realised suddenly. Not a killer at all. Just a normal, frightened little child, who wanted his older brother back, but was afraid of how things would be, if that ever eventually _happened_.

Just like she was afraid, perhaps?

'Like I said, Mazaki,' Mokuba's old coldness had returned to his voice as he got to his feet and fixed her in a stare. 'Don't forget. I need answers, and I need them from Yuugi so… so you'd just better get him back, before he's gone forever. You've only got one chance left now, and there's not much more time for you screw ups to… to screw up in.'

Anzu almost smiled, even through the severity of what she knew Mokuba was saying. And so she suddenly found herself nodding and promising, that she would do what Mokuba asked. That they would find Yuugi, and they _would_ find the answers that all of them wanted. Then Mokuba disappeared amongst the crowds, leaving Anzu alone and nervous, staring into her half finished drink.

For some reason, nobody behind the counter seemed to ask a single question as Anzu took her coat from the wall and left for home forty-five minutes early.

* * *

**TBC.**


	7. Chapter 7

**Uh... hi. **

**If you remember me, and remember this story, then I am INCREDIBLY surprised and very happy to see you. I started it a long time ago and, while it needs a great deal of touching up, I feel confident enough in the idea to continue it a little further so... Hello to everyone who is new, welcome back to everyone who is returning, and I hope you enjoy the story.**

* * *

**Chapter Seven.**

Something is growing in the heart of Domino City. Something cold and lonely.

There was a theme park here, once. A child had created it and established its rules, and so from the beginning it was flawed. It lacked the subtlety and intelligence of older, more mature businessmen. Or so its critics had claimed so ardently after Kaibaland's closure.

The truth was something far worse: that the theme park had served its purpose, and now there was nothing left for it to do except rot. So rot it did, around a dark core where only emptiness remained.

Hurt someone and the pain will grow outward, splintering out of a broken core and tearing up everything that gets in its way. The same way weeds will crack paving stones, given enough time. Darkness bruises everything it touches; and it stains. Like ink.

* * *

She crept into the kitchen with a beret pulled tight over her head, but it couldn't cover everything, and the boys were bound to notice sooner or later anyway, so she didn't particularly bother.

'Uh... Anzu?'

'What?'

Jounouchi's mouth flapped for a couple of moments, and Anzu didn't look at him, since doing so would likely make her want to attack him with a blunt object again. The Millennium Puzzle pieces that Grandfather Sugoroku had been messing with clattered onto their silver tray. Honda... coughed. Bakura was the only one who wasn't staring at him... But he was _not_ staring far too _obviously_ for it to be genuine indifference. He was focussing _extremely_ hard upon the wooden figure he was carving.

Eventually the uneasy silence was broken by Jounouchi's nonexistent grasp of tact. '...Man, what'd you do to your _hair_?'

'Dyed it.' Anzu shuffled, pulling the hat a little tighter over the sharp blonde mess that was her home attempt at a dye job.' There's no need to look at me as if I walked in with a live racoon on my head!'

'Ah. Yes. A home dye job, then. My um... my daughter used to do them all the time,' Grandfather Sugoroku coughed heavily into his hand and pointedly did not look up. 'Well, Anzu-chan, it's very... well, very...'

'...Very _akasen._' Honda said, eventually.

'Very _what_?!' Urgh. The one damned time that Honda actually paid _attention_ in Social Studies... Anzu threw her handbag at him with all the force she could muster, succeeding in not only dislodging Honda from his seat, but sending several of Bakura's freshly painted models skittering onto the carpet. 'Jerk! I did my best, it's not like I could've gone to a salon!'

'...You sure about that?' Jounouchi sniggered. 'Seriously, I figure it would've been worth the risk.'

Anzu threw her beret at him. Which didn't have the same weight and impact as her handbag, and only served to show off an extremely yellow case of hat hair.

Yellow, with _purple_ tips.

Honda couldn't control himself any longer. 'Holy... Anzu, my sister has better taste than that. And my sister gave birth to _Jouji_. You could've gotten the same effect from sticking your head in a tub of bleach.'

Anzu took a deep breath, through gritted teeth, reminded herself for the umpteenth time that killing Jounouchi wouldn't get her anywhere, and hoped to god that the stuff in her hair really was as short-term as the box had claimed it was because if she had to go to school like _this_...

'Okay, let me give this to you straight,' she muttered. 'We're sneaking into _Kaibaland_ –the creation of a psychotic millionaire with a taste for violent death games, revenge crusades, and duel monsters turned _into_ violent death games– in the middle of the night. If we get caught we'll probably end up in the middle of a Japan-wide manhunt...' Anzu took note of the fact that nobody told her she was exaggerating. Because of course, she wasn't. 'It won't kill you to dress... appropriately.'

'Or inappropriately,' Honda said, with mock composure. 'As the case may be.'

'Right.' Anzu muttered, wincing.

'...You'll, ah...' Bakura mumbled, while carefully picking up his fallen RPG pieces. 'You'll dye it back again, when this is all over, right, Anzu chan?

Anzu grit her teeth. 'Of _course_ I will! Anyway don't get too comfortable...' She nodded at Honda who is not peering into the bag she used to knock him off the chair. His face as gradually losing any pigment it previously had.

Which, Anzu thought, would make the make-up easier to apply anyway. '...It's your turn next.'

The look on their faces was just about priceless enough to make up for their earlier reaction.

'Uh. Anzu...' Jounouchi said, with a squeak. 'Tell me this is a joke.'

'Okay!' Anzu said, brightly. 'This is a joke. Now get into the kitchen while I go and find some towels. This is going to take a while.'

* * *

'Remind me why we have to do this again?'

'Because this way if they hear anything, then they'll be looking for a blonde girl with pigtails, two brunettes, and a guy with black hair. Carry on whining about it and I can make you a _red head_ you know.'

'A red... how many freaking colours do you _have_ there?'

'As many as I could pick up, I wanted to at least give you a preference.' Anzu picked amongst the bottles she had arranged in a row on the kitchen countertop, trying to work out how much she was supposed to dilute each one and which ones had the fastest application time. She brushed her hands through Jounouchi's hair it was straw dry and badly kept (especially at the back), and she would've smiled at the way he squirmed if she didn't know for a fact that he'd been dragged around by his scalp as many times as most kids had had piggybacks.

Yeah. Jounouchi's father _sucked_.

'Brunette, probably,' she murmured, mostly to herself. 'Or black... We could cut some of it off. But that might be harder to hide afterwards.'

'Wha?!' Jounouchi's squirms became a jolt.

'Oh don't be such a wuss, you don't take care of it anyway.'

Jounouchi snorted. 'Oh excuse me for forkin' out my cash on duel monsters cards instead of conditioner! This ain't about hair care, this is about you not bein' reliable with that _stuff_. I mean look what you did to your own head!'

The bottle in Anzu's hand _squeezed_. 'Jounouchi, please keep in mind that if I want to, I can make you look like a _Kuriboh_. For goodness _sakes_, you'll go to hell and back for him, but you won't dye your hair! What kind of friend are you?'

Jounouchi... shuffled. That same mess of blond hair she'd been playing with standing up on its ends.

'Whoa, Anzu,' Honda muttered, seeming darkly amused by the whole thing. 'Below the _belt_.'

'This isn't a game of One-Up's-manship, Honda.' Anzu snapped. 'You're doing this for Yuugi, _right_, Jounouchi?'

'...Muh.'

And you'll do _whatever_ is required if it means helping him, finding out whether he's... _Where_ he is, won't you?'

'...'

'Jounouchi kun?'

'...Mrfl.'

Playing the old friendship card. It never failed. 'I knew you'd see it my way... But we'd better do Bakura first, anyway. He has more to dye,' Anzu sighed, suddenly feeling acutely aware of how... ridiculous this all was. And how much she would've been laughing right now if it weren't for... if it weren't for _everything_. She was sitting in a game store kitchen giving a bunch of reluctant boys _haircuts_ so they could sneak into a deserted theme park unrecognized. As if a few dye jobs could help anything. 'Where is Bakura anyway? Don't tell me he sneaked out when I wasn't looking?'

'One moment.' Bakura's voice called back from behind the door, seeming nervous and uncertain...

'Uh? Bakura? You okay? Hey, I'm sure Anzu's dye jobs won't be that bad.'

'N-No, it's just... well.' The voice behind the door sighed. 'Don't laugh.'

Bakura stepped into the kitchen.

Anzu suddenly noticed her scissors weren't in the place she'd left them.

'Whoa... 'Kura.'

It was only now that a good sixty percent of it had gone that Anzu realised just how much of Bakura's head had been made up of his hair. Rather like someone else she knew... It gave him form and a distinctively Bakura-like shape, and without it... he seemed smaller by comparison. And Bakura was so quiet as it was... Bakura rubbed a hand through what was left and shrugged. 'I'm sorry it's been a long time since... Well, my head is a lot lighter than I ever remember it being.'

'Yeah, I'll bet.' Honda muttered.

'Yeah, I mean, way to show a guy up.' Jounouchi laughed, thumping the now rather short-haired Bakura on the shoulder. Bakura' face was turning an interesting shade of pink.

'Well I-I didn't mean... I man Anzu mentioned—'

'It was only an afterthought, you didn't have to run off and do it,' Anzu couldn't help giggling a little. Bakura' face turned an even brighter shade of pink.

'What do ya know? The guy's finally developing an Id.' Honda sniggered. 'Way to live in the moment. Nothing like an impromptu haircut to break you out of a boring cycle of sleep, school, RPG figurines and repeat.'

Bakura winced. 'Honda-kun don't _laugh_...'

'Sorry, sorry.' Honda grinned. 'Seriously, it looks cool. Kinda like Jounouchi, with a twist.'

'Man, he looks _nothing_ like me.'

'Um, thank you. I'm... I'm not sure if I did it right, though. Anzu?'

Anzu shuffled and wanted to as "why are you asking me?' Because he was looking at her as if he really, really wanted to know her opinion. On his haircut.

Somehow it all came down to things like this: things that would never and could never have possibly happened before Yuugi. If Yuugi had never been, then there would have been no impromptu unions and gatherings of pain and anger and sadness and hope, around a coffee table and an ancient, broken puzzle. No Saturdays playing with Gameboys. No Jounouchi smiling and laughing at something which wasn't outright moronic or cruel. No Bakura, with his games and models, wanting her approval for something he'd clearly done on the spur of the moment. Without Yuugi...

She only realised that the water was too hot when her fingers scalded and she pulled them away with a sharp cry. And then Jounouchi was grabbing her wrist and shoving her back under the tap again – the cold one, this time. He held it there for two whole minutes.

Anzu let out a breath slowly and evenly to keep from crying and told herself, for the million-and-oneth time, that things would be alright. The memory of the black ink marks on Mokuba's palm made her almost ready to believe it again. 'Um... sorry. Didn't realise how hot it was, I...' she paused, looking at Bakura's anxious, concerned face. 'It's nice, Bakura.' She said, quietly. 'Suits you. So, do you have a colour preference?'

Bakura entertained her by actually seeming to think about it for a moment before looking up. 'Black, please, Anzu. Better make it black.' He said quite calmly. And then he sat down in the chair, innocuous to everyone else's stares, and waited patiently while Anzu unfolded a towel and hoped she didn't scscrew this one up as badly as she had her own.

* * *

Something was growing in the heart of Domino City. Something cold and empty.

There was a theme park here, once, and Mokuba went back there over and over again; because he had to. No –because something inside of him had _told_ him that he had to. And so he did, because he was tired of listening to nothing but the pain and anger inside of his own head, and the arrogant echoing sound he liked to call "Seto". The voice he heard was understanding and gentle, and seemed to hum and whisper where the other had laughed and jeered, and somehow...

Muto Yuugi. Yeah. One way or another, it all came back to him.

Mokuba Kaiba had his brother's genius and he knew how not to be caught. Every evening he would creep out of the mansion under cover of darkness, and walk three miles into the city. He would enter the remnants of the rotting building, and less than an hour later, he would leave. He left no sign of his presence. No indication that he had ever been there.

Tonight, however, something changed. Tonight Mokuba Kaiba lifted a stone, placed something small and metallic underneath it, and left without bothering to enter this time.

By tomorrow, his attention wouldn't matter, one way or another.

* * *

They were going to break the law.

He still cared about such things, though he wasn't certain why after everything he'd seen. After theme parks constructed specifically to destroy children's lives, and games that try to eat your soul.

It wasn't even a particularly _big_ law, when you thought about it: playing around in abandoned areas, trespassing (legally you _can't_ actually be prosecuted for trespassing, or at least nobody ever had been before), and possibly vandalism if they had to break anything to get in. Something for parents to tut about and for cops to write black marks in permanent records.

And at any rate, Bakura hadn't seen his parents in a long time. His father wasn't interested in his social life or the little black marks in his record books... and there are a number of little black marks. Most of which Bakura can't remember getting.

He ran his fingers through his hair, dry and black and fraying at the ends. They'd used the wrong kind of scissors, and possibly the wrong kind of dye too and... it looks a little silly, but grownups usually thought that people Bakura's age were _supposed_ to walk around looking silly, so it probably didn't make him stand out too much . Anzu had had a good idea with this one. Without his usual hairstyle, and with the right shade of colouring in his cheeks, Honda was barely recognizable, and Jounouchi...

Well Jounouchi was always Jounouchi, even with brown hair, but it wasn't quite as obvious now, unless you were looking right at him and could see the burning in his eyes.

Really, those laws were nothing, compared to what Kaiba had done to them... But Kaiba can afford the lawyers.

'_**Little Bakura Ryou on a rescue mission. Well well.'**_

The pain ame out of nowhere, the same way that it always did. A surge in his chest, a strange feeling that is not his own, clawing against his ribcage. It felt... distorted and disgusted. As if it hated what he had done to himself. How he has changed his body to suit the task at hand.

'_**You change only as I will it, boy.'**_

Bakura curled up tightly around the pain, and remained that way, clenching both hands to his heart. Even after the pain had faded for the millionth time, he stayed that way, curled up on the sofa, hands twisted in his shirt, until Jounouchi knocks upon the door and tells them that it's time to leave.

* * *

They didn't call the police.

There'd be no point in anything like that. The station was probably eating from the table scraps of Kaiba Corp anyway. Seems as if everything in this whole damned city is. It's been five months since the incident at Kaibaland, and there's still no word from anyone... not even another call outs to the station so a few disinterested officers could prod at them and try to bully out something like a confession because they were fed up of trying to work it out for themselves. And Anzu almost smiled as she thought: they'd never break Jounouchi and Honda. Never in a million years.

The puzzle pieces clicked in her fingers.

She had dark makeup smeared all over her face: stuff she'd taken from her mother's vanity box, and hadn't bothered to find out the real purpose of, and a thick, padded coat pulled up tight around her chin. She had thin gloves covering her hands, making the pieces slip. It's dark because she never thought to turn on the lights, and anyway, so far as everyone in the outside world knows, the Kame Game Store is deserted, and everyone who could possibly be there is fast asleep upstairs.

They _are_ all upstairs. But nobody is asleep, or even close to it, although they've wanted to be for hours now. there's been no time for sleep. Since Mokuba called they've all been walking around in a kind of confused haze, barely functioning except to eat and drink and go to work and mess about with the Puzzle. And all the while there's been this strange...sensation of something coming towards them, getting nearer with every decision they made.

Anzu knows the way it works in movies. This is not yet the climax point

Anzu fiddled with the Puzzle, running her fingers along the delicate curves where the pieces fit together. She remembered...

_Explosions in a funfair, water, swimming pools, Jouonuchi wading up to his neck in water, cold lights, blades and severed limbs and darkness. So much darkness she can't imagine where it's all coming from. Something is eating the light all around them and turning it black and... _

And she must have dozed off or something, because that felt half like a dream and half like a nightmare and... The puzzle is still there, glistening and glowing fare too brightly in the absence of light. Something she could see so clearly, and yet couldn't see at all anymore.

Anzu sighed and brushed a dyed blonde strand of hair out of her eyes. Twelve pieces.

It was all that they could give him. Just twelve measly, horrible little pieces of puzzle that could just turn out to be more dangerous than they're worth. And yet she sensed something deep inside of the darkness. Something that was _proud_ of those twelve pieces. Of what they had accomplished just by _wanting_ it badly enough. She thought about the Other Yuugi and tried not to feel sick.

'Anzu?'

He'd probably been standing in the doorway for a while without her noticing. Maybe she _had_ dozed off and it was him who woke her up. she can tell, even in the darkness, that Jounouchi has his face wrapped up in about three scarves, and thick gloves on his hands. 'You okay?'

Anzu sniffed and pushed the puzzle pieces around with her fingers. 'I... I think I got another piece.'

'Yeah?' There was a smile in Jounouchi's voice. 'cool. And you didn't even have to hit me with a ladle this time, huh?'

'Jerk,' Anzu muttered, but she was smiling as she said it. 'I don't... I don't think we'll get any further than this though.'

'What? Sure we will. It'll just take time, that's all. Remember how long it took Yuugi—'

'No, Jounouchi, you don't understand.' Anzu looked up rubbing at her eyes and pretending their wet because she's tired and they're aching from staying awake for too long. 'We won't get any further because we're not supposed to. We just... we started putting it back together for him. Yuugi will finish what we started. We... I did the best I could do, Jounouchi.'

'I know. We all did.' Jounouchi said, and they had an entire moment of almost-normalcy to consider before they remembered where they were and what was going to happen tonight.

Jounouchi reached out a hand. 'C'mon, Anzu. We're going now.'


	8. Chapter 8

"_Twist and turn where angels' burn, like fallen soldiers we will learn that once forgotten twice removed love will be the death of you... "_

Tears of Pearl, Savage Garden.

Chapter Eight. 

They arrived in town, having _walked_ the entire way because even if they could have risked being seen and recognized, there was no service at this time of night anyway, at exactly two o clock in the morning. They encountered nobody on the way except for a party of less-than-sober young girls who had gawked over Jounouchi and tried to kiss Bakura _and _Anzuat the same time, (they probably wouldn't remember anything in the morning, anyway). And now they stood before Kaibaland. Or whatever remained of it; a skeleton of shapes and form in the darkness. Anzu was reminded of old movies, before they understood how you use colour theory to make things scary in ways that didn't involve black paint and brown blood.

Rather like Mokuba hadn't suspected, the door, when they found it with their torch beams, was locked. Jounouchi hissed, tracing the large steel bolt with his fingers. 'Damn it...'

'But he said it wouldn't be!'

'_Maybe we should have trusted the kid_.' Jounouchi thought, but he didn't say this aloud. Instead, he said: 'Anyone got anything we can use to pick a lock? Or explosives, maybe?'

'He said it wouldn't be locked, guys. I don't think he'd lie to us.'

'I don't mean to offend, Anzu, but... you thought differently until recently.'

'Yeah, well,' Anzu shuffled and wrapped her arms too tightly around her chest because damn it, it was _cold_. 'That was then. I think different now.'

Nobody spoke. It was impossible to know if they agreed with her or not. Anzu sighed casting her torch around, its beam interspersing with Jounouchi's. It was Jounouchi's which picked up on something first.

'Honda, hold it.'

'Jou, as fun as it would be, we're _not_ blowin' the door up.'

'No, I'm serious. Look.' He pointed the torch beam back at the floor. There was half a brick which looked as if somebody had dabbed their fingerprints in ink before picking it up.

Anzu bit down on her lip as she knelt down and pulled out a small, silver object from beneath it. 'The key. Mokuba left a mark for us.'

'Wonderful,' Honda muttered dryly. 'So back once more into the darkness, right?'

'That's not the way the saying goes, Honda.' So much for English language studies. 'It's _once more unto the breach_. Old English.'

'Anzu, I barely know _new_ English. Anyway, it serves our purpose. Care to do the honours?' he brandished to the key in Anzu's hand.

_Yuugi. We're coming. _

Anzu shivered. In spite of herself, she took hold of Jounouchi's sleeve and held on as tightly as she could, and placed the key in the lock.

**

* * *

**

They said that when you fall, it was best to fall straight to the bottom. Then all that was left to do was either stay where you were or climb back up.

Mokuba wasn't convinced he believed that. It seemed to him as if the worst place to be was right here, hanging by your fingertips on the edge between up and down and unsure what was going to happen next. Like the line between living and dying. Or dying and something far, far worse.

And maybe he was exaggerating just a little bit, but... well. Things had changed. The house was even quieter these days than it used to be. At one time he could be assured at least of the clatters and yelled instructions from his brother, or the occasionally muttering of a servant. Mokuba hadn't seen a servant in... Well, in weeks now, unless you counted Roland. And his brother was the cause of the silence. The world around him was too afraid to speak up. To question the Creator of Kaibaland. They used to be too afraid to question _him_ as well, but Mokuba didn't think he counted for much anymore. Demands and orders had lost their appeal. He wasn't certain why, but it had begun with Yuugi and...

And Mokuba had tried to hate him for that. He failed miserably but he had _tried_, and all of the anger had to go _somewhere_, so he turned it to Seto instead. He turned it to thinking of ways to cheat his older brother of his prize.

'_There is no room for brotherly love in this world.' _

Maybe not, Mokuba thinks angrily. Maybe not, but...

There could be room for _more_ wasn't there? There was room for something besides hate, revenge, and control. He wanted the world that Yuugi had shown him when he dragged him out of that glass box and back into a real world which looked nothing like the one he had always believed in. He wanted room for _friends_...

Mokuba turned a closed Capsule monster over and over in his fingers. The black marks on his hand were burning.

And then he heard the knocking.

'Mokuba?'

Seto Kaiba _never_ knocked.

'Look, I know you're there. You don't have to hide from me.'

_Yes I do_. Mokuba thought. 'Seto?'

The door handle rattled for a moment. 'Of course. Who else would it be? You locked the door.' He sounded genuinely confused and perhaps a little hurt and Mokuba remembered things he didn't want to remember all over again. Things that made it difficult to hang onto the anger. 'Why?'

'I...'

'I'm waiting.' If Mokuba didn't know better (and now he wasn't all that sure he did) he'd say that his brother sounded _amused_. Then the silence returned and hung there like a gruesome shadow, and Mokuba waited to see what would puncture it.

'Are you afraid, Mokuba?'

'I—.Y-yes.'

'But what of? You know I would never hurt you.'

Mokuba tried to believe that. He really tried. But anger and pain kept pushing the thoughts away again. 'I know, but... Seto, I can't _help_ it.'

'I know you can't. I suppose I owe you an apology,' the handle turned slightly, but the door still refused to budge. 'But it's been too long for that. I'm not sure it would matter anymore.'

He remembered the last time they had spoken to one another like this, through a locked door. Except that back then, Gozaburo had been the one who locked it and Mokuba had wanted nothing more than to smash it down. 'Understand, Mokuba, that I've always tried to do what's best for you. There's no room in this world for the feelings you covet. You saw what happened to Yuugi.' (What you _did_ to Yuugi, what _you_ did why are you acting like you don't know?). 'Wasn't that evidence enough?'

Mokuba uncurled his feet and stood up, tossing the capsule monster he held back on the bed. He remembered things. Because memories were really all he had right now.

'Aren't... you busy?'

'I'm always busy. But Roland is dealing with my accounts right now. I think it's time we had a talk, don't you, little brother?'

'What do you want to talk about?'

'I think you know that.' There was a sound like a sigh. 'I haven't been very fair to you, have it, Mokuba? No wonder you locked me out. But it's nothing which we can't fix together, now, is it? We'll even make a game out of it, if that's what you want.'

His voice is calm and quiet and doesn't sound angry or disappointed at all. Of course the softer his brother's voice was the more imminent the danger could be, but Mokuba didn't care about this. It felt like somebody was handing him a branch to grab hold of where he hung in the cliff. Like that somebody might even be his brother. Like maybe going behind his back to help Yuugi's friends had been a bad mistake all along. Because he and Seto were _brothers_, weren't they?

'No duel monsters, right? I don't wanna play that game Seto...'

'Of course not. I have no need for that game anymore, little brother.'

_No need for Duel Monsters anymore_. No need for that damned game which had ruined _everything_...

He would trade everything they had here, Mokuba thought as he reached out his hand to the door handle; every fancy capsule monster, every expensive toy, every warm bed, every moment of anger and pain and control, for just a few _moments_ back in the orphanage with his big brother, building sandcastles in the play pit. No more duel monsters, no more traps and tricks, no more broken minds and bodies strewn in their wake. Just Mokuba and his older brother and the world at their feet.

Mokuba touched the door handle, and the burn lanced through his fingertips, spreading up his arm and through his chest so sharply that he barely had time to hear the voice before pulling away from the door. The anger came back along with the rush of pain. '_No, no danger, don't open it don't open it! No more dragons_!'

Mokuba turned and bolted for the window.

**

* * *

**

He remembered this place.

He didn't _want_ to remember it, but it was etched so deeply into his brain that there was no getting it out again. It was one of those memories that made him wonder things. Like why the hell people found these places so _fun_ and whether all the people were laughing when they watched what happened on those giant screens.

He was pretty sure that some of them were. Up until the part where someone started looking dead, that was.

The probably wouldn't have been if they could _smell_ the place. All darkness and dirt and blood; misspelt letters and guillotines and _don't scream_, _whatever you do _don't_ scream_, Jounouchi remembered.

He also remembered passing out halfway through. Which _had_ kept him from screaming, of course, but...

Damn it. Yeah. H remembered this place alright, and how they had stepped from one hell hole straight into another. The Murderer's mansion looked darker than it had ever been, minus the creepy atmospheric lighting and the sound effects. Somehow it was no less disturbing.

The silence of the place dragged out for such a long time that it seemed to gain a life of its own, before Bakura spoke.

'Well. This is it, then?'

'Yeah. Death T Level Two.' Honda said. It shouldn't have looked so freaky from this angle, where you could see the scenery and the wires and ropes holding the mansion upright, and yet... 'Kinda weird, seeing it from behind, isn't it? So this is how the damn thing worked.'

Anzu sighed, her breath a loud echo in the darkness. 'You'll pardon me for not being thrilled to know the inner workings of a death trap.'

Jounouchi shuddered. 'Right, right.' And now they needed to think and... And look around or something. Because it was only now that they were ere that Jounouchi realised how little an idea they had of what to do and where to go. Mokuba's message had barely told them anything.

Mokuba's message hadn't even told them whether or not Yuugi was even alive.

'Damn it. Would it have been too much for the kid to draw us a map or something?'

They knew the answer to that question well enough, so nobody answered it aloud. It

had taken every ounce of courage the kid had just to give them a key and a location via cryptic phone message.

'Look let's think about this logically,' Anzu mumbled, and Jounouchi considered questioning the... well ,the logic of logic while they were standing around a Haunted House in the middle of an abandoned theme park that had been designed specifically to kill them, but then thought better of it. 'We just... we have to _think_. Death T has five separate stages so there are only five places he could possibly be. He wouldn't be anywhere where you could just stand up and walk away again. He would have to be somewhere locked in, so—'

No.' Jounouchi shook his head. 'He... I mean, it's something Mokuba said. He said they don't bother to lock doors anymore so...' He paused, because that train of thought was going somewhere he didn't like the looks of. 'Wherever he is, he isn't locked in.'

They walk a little further, stepping out of the foreground of the "ride" and further into the background of support wires and special effects control booths. Anzu is trying to pick out the door which reads to the staff changing quarters.

'Perhaps we're thinking about this the wrong way,' Bakura said evenly. 'We're assuming he's somewhere in the park itself. But Mokuba said something else, didn't he? _Staff Entrance B. Look for Anzu's jacket_. He probably meant that we were supposed to look in the staff areas.'

'But... but I was in Staff Area K,' Anzu said slowly, catching on. 'Not B.'

'Aaand do you have any idea where area B is?' Honda asked.

'Not a clue. I only worked here for a _day_, I didn't exactly have time to memorise the layout.'

'Great.' Another step forwards and the faux turf ground creaked beneath him in a way grass totally shouldn't have.

And it was about now that he became aware of something that wasn't fear or darkness, creeping in on the edges of him mind. A warm sensation burning across the back of his right hand.

Honda hissed. 'You feel that, right?'

'Depends on what you mean by _feel_,' Jounouchi muttered because... t his wasn't a feeling. Not per se. This was something deeper than that, something he had started to notice whenever he was about to draw just the right duelling card out of his new deck, or when he anticipated another puzzle piece slotting easily into place.

'...We have something better than a map.' Anzu whispered. 'We _know_ he's here, so we'll find him.'

'Right,' Jounouchi smiled, reaching out his hand in front of him, sensing the pull of the worn away ink that Anzu had drawn across his fingers. He can feel it, tugging at the back of his heart, as easily as he can feel the air rushing in and out of his lungs.

...And the resultant coughing. There was dust glittering in the beams of torchlight, and if Jounouchi listened, he could almost hear the whirring of electricity from distant generations.

Then again, how could generators be making a sound if they were...

'Uh oh...' Honda gulped.

And then the lights went _up_, strong and bright, highlighting the background of the Murderer's mansion with a million strange colours. The sound of the generators seemed so loud that it rang in Jounouchi's ears, screaming and announcing their presence to the world. Everyone turned to face Bakura, who was snapping his hands away from a wall panel as if the lights were all his fault and then he started scrambling with the panel as if trying to turn them off again.

'S-sorry. Oh, no, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!'

'No time, man,' Jounouchi hissed, grabbing hold of Anzu's arm. 'Just go!'

And so they ran as fast as they could, in the direction their hearts were pulling them.

* * *

Duel Monsters had become Grandfather Sugoroku's favourite game. Behind the one he was named after, anyhow. Long before he became a grandparent, he had played Duel Monsters. The game had been in its infancy back then, and nobody had thought twice about a Blue Eyes White Dragon falling into the lap of some man who was far too old to play the game in the first place, even then. It was many years before anybody could call the game an obsession, and there had been a time, Sugoroku knew, when he would've traded his left arm for a card of such rarity as the blue eyes.

Losing his grandson to this game, however... Well, that one had never been on the cards.

Muto Sugoroku knew the value of games, as well as he knew how much people often over valued them. He knew where obsession turned nasty and where dreams turned into nightmares. He'd cut it too close to the line himself so many times, and now, Yuugi...

Sugoroku turned the pieces of millennium puzzle over and over with one hand, holding his duel deck –Yuugi's deck, he'd given it to him, it was... it was Yuugi's deck– in the other.

Well. Yuugi was out there. And his friends would find him. Frankly, Sugoroku would've been out there looking with them if it weren't for the fact that Jounouchi had the common sense to lock the door, take the spare key, and hide all of Sugoroku's shoes before he left.

Perhaps he'd taught that boy how to think strategically a little _too_ well.

Sugoroku sighed, and felt his bones protesting as he gathered himself and stood up again. This pacemaker was a strange and annoying thing. He wasn't sure if it's his imagination or not, but he could swear he can hear the damned thing ticking in the middle of the night.

A little like the noise he's hearing right now, actually...

Except that this noise wasn't coming from his pacemaker. It wasn't coming from him at all in fact. Sugoroku shuddered, feeling the sensation of something strange and familiar all at once. A sullen, distant pounding; a quickening beat, coming from his right hand.

Sugoroku lifted his pack of Duel Monster cards up to his face, and smiled.

Yuugi Muto's heartbeat echoed loudly from inside his grandfather's deck.


End file.
